


Tip, Slide, Tumble

by j_s_cavalcante



Category: due South
Genre: Biracial Character, Case Fic, First Time, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-30
Updated: 2010-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-06 20:11:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_s_cavalcante/pseuds/j_s_cavalcante
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray knew when he found the body in the alley it was going to change someone's life. He just didn't expect that life would be his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tip, Slide, Tumble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nos4a2no9](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Nos4a2no9).



> Written for the Due South Seekrit Santa gift exchange, 2007.

“Oh, no. Oh, Jesus. No.” Ray crouched in the alley, hardly noticing the usual crime-scene hubbub beginning to form around him. Backup had arrived: a blue &amp; white, an ambulance, Welsh’s car, the ME’s wagon, maybe more. Ray heard footsteps crunching on pavement, the hum of voices. The rotating lights painted the alley in rhythmic washes of red and blue. It was the only color. Everything else was wet black and drab gray. And it was so fucking cold.

 

Kind of funny that Ray could find Chicago cold in November after March in the Far North had almost killed him. But there were worse things than a little weather. And there were colder things than ice.

 

Like the thin shape Ray was leaning over. When he and Fraser found her, he’d touched her once to see if he could feel a pulse, but he’d known already. He’d called backup and managed not to freak out or puke, which he’d sometimes been known to have a problem with around corpses, but Fraser’d been right there with him, going on about something Ray didn’t even remember, with that steady, calm voice like he used with the sled dogs, and Ray’d kept his cool.

 

Till now, anyway. Till he got a good look at her face and recognized her. Her eyes were supposed to be brown, but they looked gunmetal gray in the alley light. They were half-open, and Ray tried not to look at them, tried to just take in the details, do his job, not think about anything else. Her skin wasn’t warm brown like it should have been, but gray, too, like everything else in this goddamned alley, like the pile of trash a couple feet away.

 

She looked like she’d been thrown here just like that.

 

Ray’s stomach got tight and queasy at that thought. He asked his cop instincts whether she could have fallen this way by accident or whether she’d been placed here, but his cop instincts were haywire. He couldn’t get a good read.

 

He tried to make himself focus. No wounds, he couldn’t see any wounds. There was no smell or sight of blood. So maybe she’d ODed and fallen here, maybe it was what he’d warned her about so many times, which she never listened, and now it was too late.

 

Ray kept trying to assess the scene, to take mental notes, to see what was right in front of him and somehow know what had happened here, but he couldn’t even make himself focus on her face any more.

 

He kept seeing another face. A little face. A lot like hers, except light-skinned, with big, burning dark eyes, burning with curiosity, with questions, with the knowledge that things were not right in this world.

 

They sure as hell never would be now.

 

Ray felt the world tip, slide, tumble, then lurch back to something almost normal. His hand was pressed hard against the brick wall, holding him up. He didn’t know whether he’d actually started to faint or only imagined it, ’cause his head was still kind of fuzzy.

 

“Ray?” Huey’s voice, next to him, cracked a little in the cold night air. “You okay, man?”

 

Ray shook his head, unable to speak, trying to get some air, trying to make the alley hold still for a minute. Finally he managed a few words. “I know her.”

 

“Oh, Jeez,” Huey said. “Lieu!”

 

But Welsh had seen. “Fraser!” he barked, “get your partner out of here, please.”

 

Fraser had been down at the end of the alley, probably sniffing and licking disgusting things, but either Ray must have lost a few seconds there, or Fraser really could fly like Superman, because it seemed like his big, warm hand was on Ray’s shoulder before Welsh even finished speaking.

 

“Ray.” Fraser’s voice in his ear made him shiver.

 

Ray’s knees felt old and tired as he got to his feet. Why wouldn’t the alley stop moving around on him?

 

Fraser’s hand was still on his shoulder, pressing kind of hard. Helping him focus. “I think they’re ready for her,” Fraser said.

 

She’d be photographed, measured, checked out in place, first. Then the ME would bag and tag her, and Welsh was right; Ray shouldn’t watch that. It was hard enough to watch that procedure when the victim was some stranger.

 

Not that Ray knew her well, ’cause he didn’t. Nobody really _knew _her. Except maybe one little guy, and he wasn’t talking much.

 

Ray was up, moving away from her, but he wasn’t fast enough, and he saw them coming for her, their white gloves reaching for her, and he heard his boots make a scraping sound on the pavement like he’d lost his balance, which Ray almost never did that, he was usually steady on his feet no matter what. The tightness rose up inside his stomach and he was either going to puke or do something worse, like cry, maybe, but instead he whipped around, away from where they were _doing stuff_ to her, away from Fraser’s steadying hand, away towards the brick wall of the alley, fist first—

 

“Ray!”

 

“Dammit Fraser!” It took a few seconds for Ray to twig to the fact that he’d said something, a few more to notice his hand was on the wall again, knuckles first. It came away slippery. Wow, that was going to—

 

Okay, yeah. That hurt. Fuck. He forced his hand open and aimed for the wall again with his palm, but something stopped him. Fraser’s hand had clamped around his wrist like a too-tight handcuff.

 

“Hey, what’re you—?”

 

“I can’t let you destroy your hand, Ray,” said the Voice of Reason.

 

“Kowalski!” That was Welsh’s bark, from over by one of the cars. Ray went toward him, and Fraser let go of his wrist immediately, but stayed so close behind him that Ray thought he could feel Fraser’s warm breath on his neck.

 

Welsh’s eyes were compassionate, but he had his no-nonsense face on, which steadied Ray almost as much as Fraser’s hand had done. “Tell me what you know, Detective.”

 

Ray knew his hand hurt like hell. He felt Fraser grab it, wrap something around it: a clean, cloth handkerchief. Of course. As Ray watched, red spots appeared in it over each knuckle. His stomach felt like it was pushing up into his throat with the need to throw up. He swallowed hard.

 

“Dani,” he managed to say. “Danitra Brown. She’s about 25, I think. Nobody really knows. Crack…she’s, you know, did crack, and, uh...”

 

“Crackhead? Crack whore?”

 

For the first time ever, Ray sincerely wanted to hit his lieu.

 

He wouldn’t have, of course. He was pissed off, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d have hit the wall once more instead, but Fraser’s hand was making like a cuff again, Fraser’s strength was wrenching his arm back so hard that Welsh probably didn’t even see Ray’s muscles twitching.

 

“Don’t call her that. Sir.” Ray’s teeth were gritted so hard they were making a sound.

 

“Sorry. Crack addict and prostitute,” Welsh revised. “Focus, Kowalski. Tell me what you know, then get out of here and get your head together. Jack and Dewey are catching this one.”

 

“No, sir! It’s my case, I got the call, I found her—” He’d been driving through the neighborhood, heard the alert come in on the radio—a neighbor saw somebody drop in the alley, please investigate—and Ray and Fraser were right there, just a block and a half away, checking out the Cabrinis’ usual haunts.

 

“Your objectivity’s clearly out the window,” Welsh said. His eyes narrowed. “How well do you know her?”

 

“Not _that_ well. It’s not that. She hangs…she hung around the projects. The community center, the gym, sometimes. I’d see her there. Levon…you remember Levon Jefferson, the boxer?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“If nobody was around, Levon would talk to her, and I’d talk to her any time, but then, I already stand out down there, skinny white cop, it’s not like I got a rep to protect, not like Levon.”

 

“Since when are the Cabrini gang members loath to associate with addicts and prostitutes?” Welsh said. “Is this some new development no one has seen fit to inform me about?”

 

“Nah, it’s not that.” Jesus, Fraser was hurting his arm. Fraser wouldn’t do that unless there was a real good reason.

 

Which, yeah, now that he thought about it, Ray’s shoulder muscles were still twitching with the need to hit something. Fraser was right. Ray’d smash his hand and be out of commission for weeks if he didn’t get his shit together. He shook out his neck, tried to make himself cool it.

 

“Kowalski, you’ve been on the force 18 years. You’ve seen dead crack addicts before, even ones you knew. What’s so special about this one?”

 

Ray felt his throat tighten up. He sagged a bit in Fraser’s grip. “She’s got a kid.”

 

Fraser’s hand squeezed his wrist, gently this time, and he let go.

 

“Oh, Christ,” Welsh said. “Kid’s not in the system?”

 

“Nah, Social Services never seemed to care, and when they did show up, Dani always managed to make them believe she wasn’t using. Wasn’t like anybody else wanted the little guy. He’s got…issues. He’s a bright kid, but he don’t talk much.”

 

“Born addicted?”

 

“I don’t know. She never talked about that. He’s about three, maybe four by now. Real little. I haven’t seen him since, you know.” He motioned towards Fraser like that explained everything: the mad chase into Canada on the trail of the killer of Fraser’s mother. The two months on a dogsled looking for Franklin. The months since, returning to Chicago, decompressing, turning back into a cop again. Getting a more permanent assignment at the 27th because Vecchio’d retired, and Welsh _asked_ for Ray.

 

And then…getting back his Canadian partner, getting the duet _back_ when he’d thought it was gone.

 

Ray hadn’t made time to go back to the community gym, and anyway, Levon wasn’t there anymore, and Ray’d gotten the cold shoulder around that place a lot worse since he’d brought in Devlin and Dixon.

 

“Does she have any other family?” Welsh asked, but the look on his face showed he already knew the score. Anybody on the force long enough knew about girls like Dani. If they had any family, it was nobody who’d admit to it now.

 

“Never mentioned any.”

 

“Kid have a father?”

 

“Unless he’s the second coming, he did, but you’d never know it.”

 

“You say Levon used to talk to her? Him and her have a thing?”

 

“Nah.” Levon didn’t have a “thing” for any girl, but that wasn’t the kind of information it was safe to talk about in an alley a couple of blocks from Levon’s neighborhood, ever. “Just friends. He ain’t the father. None of those Cabrini kids is the father.” He shrugged. “None of ’em that’s going to own up to it anyway.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“I ain’t a what you call it, a genetics scientist, but he’s white, Lieu. The kid’s white. Well, you know, only half, but that’s the half he looks like.”

 

Welsh shrugged. “Some john?”

 

“I don’t know. I can ask around.”

 

“Who takes care of the kid?”

 

Ray shook his head. “That’s the thing, sir. I’ve never seen anybody but her with him. I don’t know what she did when she had a…date. I guess maybe another girl helped out.”

 

“She have a place?”

 

“Yeah. I looked into the situation once or twice. She was telling the truth; she lived with roommates. I remember the place.”

The one time he’d been there, seen the outside at least, Dani and Jackson weren’t home, so he’d checked it out without her knowing about it. But at this hour, somebody would probably be home, wouldn’t they? Because Jackson—

 

Ray smacked his head. “Christ. Lieu. Somebody’s gotta go check it out now. Kid could be alone.”

 

“Phone it in,” Welsh said. “Have Child Protective Services meet you there.”

 

“Me, sir?” It wasn’t a job for a detective. Jeez, could Welsh be any more transparent about wanting Ray away from this case?

 

“Kid knows you?”

 

“Yeah, sure. Okay. You got a point.”

 

“You and Fraser get over there.” Welsh looked like he was two seconds from ordering Ray to let Fraser drive, so Ray turned away fast.

 

“Kowalski.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

He turned back, but only halfway.

 

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

 

“She wasn’t,” Ray said. “I mean I talked to her, but…she didn’t let anybody in.”

 

“Yeah,” Welsh said, sighing. “Look. When you get your head cleared, couple of days, I’m putting you on finding her dealer.”

 

Ray turned around all the way to face him. “You think somebody killed her?”

 

“Nah,” Welsh said. “We’ll see what Mort says, but this one don’t smell like a murder. I’m just thinking he loses one good client he’s going to want to replace her. So who does he go after next? Maybe some fourteen-year-old runaway who’s turned a trick or two to make ends meet?”

 

“I get you. Another Dani.”

 

“And another orphaned kid.”

 

_Orphaned._ Sucky word. Ray’s stomach tightened right back up. “Christ. You’re right, Lieu, I got to get over there. Some no-name face from CPS is gonna take Jackson out of his home.”

 

“Who?”

 

“That’s him. Jackson’s the little guy.”

 

“Jackson Brown?” Welsh said.

 

Ray rolled his eyes. “Could be worse.”

 

“Yeah, his mother could’ve been a Brando fan,” Welsh said.

 

“Very funny, sir,” Ray said, but his heart wasn’t in the sarcasm.

 

“Get out of here. Go make sure CPS doesn’t fuck it up.”

 

“Yeah, okay.” Ray pulled his phone out with one hand and nabbed Fraser’s arm with the other. “We’re out of here.”

 

 

 

The kid was asleep when Ray and Fraser went in with CPS. It was around midnight, so no surprise there. The place was a cheap little walk-up of an apartment, one bedroom, and the stairs creaked like they weren’t going to make it through another year, but it hadn’t fallen down yet.

 

Turned out Dani had three roommates. Two of them were out, probably working the streets, and the one that was home looked hung over and maybe even like she still had a buzz on, but she was alert enough to wake up and let them in.

 

She seemed genuinely surprised to hear Dani was out, so Ray believed her when she said she hadn’t been asked to babysit. He didn’t bother looking around for what she was on. He was not here to hassle her, he was here to see that Jackson got taken care of. The kid wasn’t ever going to come back here, and hauling the roommate in for possession of whatever she had possession of, which Ray didn’t look around for, would just make her already hard life even harder, and wouldn’t change anything.

 

She’d go downtown, get booked for some offense that would mean a fine that she’d have to turn an extra trick to pay, or if it was her third strike she’d do some time and then get out—bitter, tougher, hating the world a little more—and go right back to doing what she’d been doing before, getting high as often as possible and turning tricks to pay for the stuff.

 

Ray took her name and number and asked her a few questions, like when did she last see Dani, did she know of anyone having a beef with Dani, did she know of anything unusual in Dani’s routine. She answered and he wrote a bunch of notes in his notebook, and that was pretty much it, because he didn’t see nothing lying around that would have forced him to arrest her, which was good. The last thing Ray wanted to do right now was arrest…he looked at his notes…Neenah Williams, roommate of the late Dani Brown.

 

“What did she do?” Neenah asked him. “You bust her?”

 

“No,” Ray said. “No, I did not bust her. She, uh…we’ll get to that after we take care of Jackson. Okay?”

 

“Whatever.”

 

The CPS lady looked at him and shrugged like _What you going to do? _

 

Lucky for Ray he didn’t have to do anything. Whatever Neenah was on, she did not appear to be highly intoxicated, she hadn’t been aware that Danitra wasn’t here to watch Jackson, and she obviously hadn’t done the kid any harm. They could all see that he was fine, tucked under a ratty blanket on his little mattress in the bedroom. The bedroom was a little chilly, but no colder than Ray’s had been when he was a kid and his parents turned the thermostat down to three degrees above burst water pipes.

 

“Do we gotta wake him up?” Ray asked the CPS lady.

 

She blew her breath out hard, pushing a loose strand of her hair out of her face. “Well, we can’t leave him here. And it’s very disorienting to go to sleep in one place and wake up somewhere else.”

 

“Yeah, I know that, I know. Just…” Just, he was so peaceful, and he went to sleep with a mom and he was going to wake up without one. Even if Danitra hadn’t been the best mom, Jackson was healthy, right? That had to count for something. And she was the only mom he had. The little guy didn’t deserve to wake up and find out that now he had nobody.

 

“You say he knows you, Detective?” Under her drooping hair, her brown eyes were drooping, too, and they were tired, so tired.

 

Ray nodded. “I used to coach at the community gym. Dani and him hung out there sometimes. Cute little guy. Wants to be a boxer.” He smiled in spite of himself. “Or a cop. It’s all he sees. Well, except for drug dealers and hookers, but they’re like scenery around here. I figure he hasn’t seen a lot of other options.”

 

“Or it could mean he looks up to you,” Fraser said quietly.

 

Startled, Ray shot him a glance. “Huh. I never thought of that.”

 

“It’s quite probable,” the CPS lady said. “Kids that age usually think of their beloved adults as superheroes.”

 

Ray rocked back on his heels. _Beloved adults? _He glanced at Fraser, whose face was still serious, but his eyes…his eyes were smiling. At Ray. Like Fraser thought it made perfect sense that a little kid would love Ray.

 

“Could you wake him?” The CPS lady asked Neenah. “Real gently.”

 

“Sure,” she said. “He’s a real good kid. He don’t cry or nothing.” She pushed at his shoulder. “Wake up, baby. You got company.”

 

Jackson stirred, and Ray realized they would all look like giants from the kid’s perspective. He knelt down next to the mattress, motioning the others back.

 

“Hey, Jackson. Wake up, buddy.”

 

The boy sat up, knuckling his eyes with one little fist. He was bigger than when Ray’d last seen him, but had the same chubby pixie face and thick auburn curls. He blinked a lot. “R-eh?”

 

“Yeah, it’s Ray. Hiya, Jackson.”

 

Yeah, he sounded lame, but just how were you supposed to do a thing like this?

 

Fraser was several feet behind Ray, perched on the edge of one of the mattresses, but Ray could feel him there, offering silent support.

 

“M-uh?” Jackson said.

 

“She’s…out,” Ray said. He glanced at the CPS lady, who nodded like he was doing it right, which was absurd, since there was no “right” here. Someone was going to have to tell Jackson eventually, but it couldn’t be Ray, and it couldn’t be now. It had to be someone with a degree and an office and probably admitting privileges at the local loony bin, or wherever they sent kids.

 

“Look…um, you can’t stay here alone while your mom’s out. You gotta have a real babysitter and all. This lady is here to take you to a new babysitter, okay?”

 

Jackson’s big eyes took in all the people in the room. He looked like he didn’t understand a word Ray said, but Ray knew he probably got some of it.

 

Ray looked back over his shoulder at the CPS chick, whose name he didn’t even remember, even though they’d introduced themselves outside.

 

“I’m Miss Mary,” she told Jackson.

 

Jackson looked at her a minute, sizing her up, then he smiled. “M-eh,” he said.

 

“He said ‘Mary,’” Ray told her. “Looks like you passed the test.”

 

“Good. That’ll save you from having to come with me to drop him off.” She looked at Jackson. “I’m going to take you to see Miss Lila, honey. She’ll take good care of you. She has some kids, so you’ll have friends to play with. But since it’s still nighttime, you can sleep in the car if you want, okay?”

 

Jackson nodded. He had a real serious look to his face, as though he’d understood every word. More likely, Ray realized, the kid was about a minute from dropping off to sleep again.

 

“You okay with Miss Mary taking you from here?” Ray asked him. “I’ll come visit you soon, I promise.”

 

“R-eh…eh.” Jackson said, which was “Ray” and “yes.” He blinked and put a hand out to Ray, and Ray swept him up into a hug and stood up. The little guy was light as anything, no more weight to him than a doll. And he was warm, despite the chill in the room, and he still had that sweet baby smell about him. He had little PJs on with feet, cutest thing Ray’d ever seen, even though the feet parts were a little worn and dingy.

 

Ray’s chest was tight, so tight.

 

“Does he have a coat?” Miss Mary asked Neenah.

 

“Yeah. Sure.”

 

The women bustled around getting the coat and packing Jackson’s clothes. They helped Ray put the coat on him. It was the green one Ray had bought him, but it was getting short in the arms; kid was growing like a weed. Ray thought it looked a little inadequate for a cold November night, close to freezing, so he picked up the ratty blanket off the bed and wrapped it around Jackson on top of the coat.

 

Jackson suffered everyone’s attentions patiently, like he was used to being bundled up and carried off somewhere in the middle of the night, and—God, he probably was, Ray realized. He was obviously also used to being left alone. Tonight, if Neenah had gone out—which she might have, not knowing Jackson was here—he’d have been alone.

 

Damn. Ray should have done more investigating, sooner. He should have looked Dani up more often and talked her into going to rehab instead of that cycle of trying to quit on her own, falling off the wagon, trying to quit again, and so on, like she had been doing.

 

Maybe he should’ve sicced CPS on her, actually, because with the prostitution and the drugs, there would have been probable cause at least to look into child endangerment.

 

Thing was, she was really good at covering everything up, and Jackson always seemed happy and healthy, so if Ray stayed away, just saw her at the gym when she came around with Jackson, he never had probable cause. If he’d gone and looked her up more than just the one time when he made sure about where she lived (he’d done that for Jackson’s sake only)—if he’d looked her up he’d probably have had to arrest her, and then Ray would have been the reason Jackson didn’t have his mother, and that…that didn’t bear thinking about.

 

And anybody looking at Jackson now could see the kid was okay. Except for the speech thing, and maybe that wasn’t Dani’s fault. Ray figured it could’ve happened to any kid; he didn’t really know.

 

And Dani was his mother, and there was nobody in this world who was going to love Jackson like his own mother, nobody ever again.

 

Ray held onto him a little tighter. It was so fucking unfair.

 

“We’re ready to take him now,” Miss Mary said quietly, almost the very same words Fraser had said when the ME was going to take Dani, and that made Ray grit his teeth and blink back honest-to-God tears.

 

He glanced over at Fraser, who was standing there holding his hat, his attention fixed on Ray, his face too pale in the dim room. He wore his “I am a Mountie” expression, his “please remain calm” expression, but Ray saw right through it. Fraser was right there with Ray, right on the same page, on the same _line._

 

Ray ended up carrying Jackson down to the car, where Miss Mary’s assistant waited, a big guy with an easygoing manner and at least a hundred pounds on Ray, all of it sheer muscle. That made sense. When she had to make a call in this neighborhood, at this time of night—hell, probably any time at all—she needed somebody like that guy with her.

 

“So where’s Dani?” Neenah said when Ray and Fraser headed back up the creaky steps. Ray had waited on the stoop till the CPS lady had bundled Jackson into a car seat, his sleepy little head lolling on the headrest, and she and her assistant had driven off.

 

Then he turned and herded Neenah back inside. Normal procedure was to sit the roommate down and tell her right away, but he hadn’t wanted any talk of what had happened with Dani where Jackson could hear it, asleep or no.

 

Ray glanced at Fraser, caught his eye. Fraser gave that little nod of his, barely visible, which nobody else but Ray would have noticed. Fraser was with him on this, too. Somehow that made it easier.

 

So Ray sat her down and told her. When he got tongue tied, which happened like a minute in, Fraser filled in for him, smoothly, as though he was a CPD officer and not a Canadian lesion, or whatever. She cried a little, and she asked what was going to happen to Jackson. So Ray figured maybe she wasn’t that buzzed after all, and she sure seemed decent; maybe she was just a chick who pretty much got no sleep and had a night off for a change, and Ray had to go and tell her something like this. He felt like a fucking idiot; he always felt like a fucking idiot when he had to give this kind of news.

 

“Foster care, I guess,” Ray said. “Till they find him something more permanent. Dani ever mention any relatives to you?”

 

“She said she didn’t have nobody.”

 

“She ever talk about the father?”

 

“Only once. She said it was an old boyfriend didn’t want nothing to do with the kid. She never told me his name.”

 

“She ever talk to Jackson about his father?”

 

Neenah shook her head. “She told Jackson stories when she was straight enough to remember any, but nothing about no father. And it’s not like the kid _asks. _He still don’t hardly talk.”

 

“That don’t mean he can’t think,” Ray said.

 

“Yeah, I hear you. But nobody knows what goes on in that head of his.”

 

She was wrong about that. Ray and Jackson could understand each other, even though Jackson didn’t talk so much in words.

 

“You need us to call someone for you?”

 

She looked at him like he was nuts. “Who would you call?”

 

“A friend? A relative? You just lost your roommate, a friend…”

 

She shrugged. “Yeah, well. Nothing I can do about it.”

 

Which was true.

 

“Me, I lose friends all the time,” Neenah added. “Goes with life on the streets. But Jackson sure didn’t deserve this.”

 

“No,” Fraser said suddenly from where he’d been standing behind Ray, quiet, so quiet all this time. “No child ever does.”

 

It wasn’t till that moment that it hit Ray between the eyes: Fraser knew this scene like he’d been here before. Because he had. Just like Jackson, sort of, only Fraser had been six; old enough to understand when they told him his mother was never coming back.

 

Old enough to feel the world slipping out from under his feet.

 

It kind of put Fraser’s freakishness in perspective.

 

Ray had the really stupid impulse to sling his arm around Fraser’s neck and hug him. It was really stupid, because someone else was there and it just wouldn’t look right, but if they’d been alone, it wouldn’t have been stupid at all, and Ray would have done it. Fraser would’ve been okay with it.

 

All he could do, instead, was to meet Fraser’s eyes, tell him that way, and Fraser nodded silently, and that was it.

 

Ray made himself breathe. He also made himself make nice and polite to Neenah as they checked through Dani’s effects to see if they could find some ID for Jackson and anything else that shouldn’t be left here. They found some papers, including Jackson’s birth certificate, no father listed. Ray didn’t know who was ultimately supposed to get the papers, but figured he’d do the usual and turn them in at the station to get filed as effects of the deceased. CPS might need the birth certificate; Welsh would know.

 

Ray tried not to sigh too loudly. It had been a hard enough night for him, but it had to be ten times worse for Fraser. Ray needed to just do his job as quickly and efficiently as possible and then get Fraser out of here and take him home to sleep.

 

Fraser didn’t look tired, even though he was wearing his off-duty jeans and leather jacket and not the red Mountie uniform that Ray knew from itchy personal experience could keep you standing up straight even if you were ready to faint dead away. It must’ve been the power of The Hat, then, because Ray could feel in his bones how exhausted Fraser was. He got everything collected and got Neenah to sign a statement as a witness to what papers he’d taken with him.

 

Then he smacked Fraser’s arm gently and made _let’s get outta here_ gestures, yawning at the same time.

 

Fraser looked like he was going to tip over and have to be carried out to the car, but no, apparently that was just Ray’s exhausted brain making up stuff, because what Fraser really did was tip his hat to Neenah on the way out. And that made Ray smirk at him, mostly to hide the hard tug he felt in his chest, because Fraser was something else. It didn’t matter that Neenah was a hooker and a drunk, maybe a junkie like Dani; Fraser treated her like he would have treated any other person—with respect.

 

You didn’t see a lot of that on the force, not after eighteen years. Cops got tired, they got scared, they got burned out, they got cynical. Not Fraser.

 

Ray found himself wishing again that he could give Fraser that hug, but that idea led his brain to places it should not go, not now, and probably not ever, so he just said “C’mon, buddy,” half under his breath, and they got the hell out of there.

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

Ray slept half the morning away the next day, which was fine even though it was Monday, since he’d worked straight through his Sunday till after midnight. Fraser didn’t have the day off, though, and Ray didn’t need to call the Consulate and check to find out that Fraser had gotten up at the crack of oh-dark-thirty as usual and started in on a full day of whatever the hell he did there when he wasn’t liaisoning with Ray.

 

At least Thatcher was gone and Fraser now answered to a guy in a suit who wasn’t RCMP but an honest-to-God diplomat. He had some respect for the fact that Fraser was an actual cop, which was a refreshing change, because he gave Fraser all the actual cop work that came into the Consulate, and it turned out there was more than you’d think, especially arranging security details for visiting Canadian VIPs, investigating smuggling and document-forgery operations, tracking down suspicious and threatening communications. In fact, there was all sorts of stuff Fraser could use his training for, and he even could use Ray’s help with some of it.

 

And there was still plenty of time for Fraser to lesion with the Chicago PD, because the diplomat guy didn’t make Fraser do guard duty or pushups or any other creepy authoritarian shit like Thatcher’d been into.

 

Ray slouched into the kitchen and made coffee in the actual coffeemaker. He had to concentrate to get the right amounts of coffee and water in there, but he managed.

 

By the time he had a decent amount of caffeine running in his veins, he also had a twisting, unsettled feeling in his gut, and it wasn’t hunger.

 

He kept seeing Jackson’s little face, slack from sleep, his eyes blinking. Kept hearing his soft “M-uh?” The kid was probably going to be asking that question a lot in the days and weeks to come and never getting a good answer. There’d always be some evasion from the grown-ups. Always some lame reason given for why he could never see his mother again.

 

Before Ray had turned all the paperwork in at the 27th and gone home to crash, he’d glanced at the birth certificate and noted the date: May 15, 1995.

 

Jackson was four and a half years old. Also, his real first name was Andrew.

 

Andrew Jackson Brown. Jeez, what was it with parents and names?

 

The other thing Ray kept seeing was Jackson as he’d been the last time Ray saw him. It was late last winter, just before Ray left Chicago unexpectedly on the outside of a plane and didn’t return till the summer….

 

 

Dani’d been hanging around the community center with the kid, as usual, and Ray had seen her out there, shivering in her stupid, thin coat, and he’d beckoned her inside.

 

She didn’t usually come in without an invitation, unless Jackson was too cold or needed something. Ray didn’t really know why she hung around, since she just got insults from most of the boxers and any onlookers hanging around. Except Levon Jefferson, that sweet kid, who was still talking to Ray even after Ray’d had to arrest him the year before.

 

Levon, besides being a good guy, and a decent boxer, was smart. He understood that Ray’d been ordered to bust him, that Ray probably saved his life by doing it, and that Ray believed in his innocence all along and risked his own life proving it. He was wise enough to see past appearances to the real stuff underneath, and he forgave Ray. He even told Ray straight out he thought they were pretty much even, everything considered.

 

And there was one more thing Levon was, the thing that made him smile a little too long and too pretty at Ray sometimes, that made him talk softer than your typical Cabrini gang member would’ve talked to a cop, that made him somebody Dani didn’t try to solicit and didn’t feel afraid of.

 

Levon didn’t give off the vibes the other guys did, which went something along the lines of, she was a whore and a crackhead and beneath them, and they didn’t waste money on chicks like her, but if she was giving out freebies, the line would form on the left. It was more than vibes, sometimes. Sometimes they said it right out, with lots of showing off and crotch-grabbing for emphasis.

 

But Levon, though, he just smiled and said hello and basically treated her like he treated everybody else. Like she was human. And he didn’t want nothing from her, free or otherwise, because he just wasn’t wired that way.

 

Ray knew, of course Ray knew. He’d had his gaydar working just fine years before Levon was even born.

 

It was one of those things that you didn’t talk about. You didn’t talk about Levon being gay, or about Ray being a cop, or about Dani being a junkie. You didn’t talk about Jackson not talking. So the three of them didn’t talk about much of anything that meant anything. But when Ray saw Dani and Jackson, which wasn’t that often, since Ray didn’t go the gym much after the Franco Devlin thing, he talked to Jackson more than he talked to her. Dani never had much to say, even though she could talk when she wanted to. Jackson couldn’t say most words at all, but he was full of things he wanted to communicate, and he managed to make himself understood just fine.

 

Ray understood him, anyway, and the kid seemed to get him, too, which was all kinds of cool.

 

That last time Ray’d seen him, Jackson had been a tiny thing, though not rail-thin like Dani. He had that three-year-old chubbiness about him, round pink cheeks, tubby belly, bright eyes. He was obviously being fed okay, whether Dani was doing it or making sure he spent the day with someone who would.

 

Ray knelt down and pretended to teach the kid to box, and got him laughing and running around like a little maniac. When Levon started making “I got better things to do here than watch kindergarten hour” noises, Ray found Jackson a jump rope, shortened it up, and showed him how to skip it. The kid couldn’t really manage it, but he tried fucking hard, and he worked on it for, like, half an hour while Ray sparred with Levon.

 

The whole time, Danitra sat there on a bench with her back against the wall, her knees up against her chest, shaking like she usually did. Whether it was the cold getting to her or whether it had been too long since her last fix, Ray didn’t know.

 

Jackson was sitting on the floor making a train or maybe a snake out of the rope and pulling it under and around the bench when Ray finally sent Levon off to the showers. Then Ray swung down out of the ring and found his stuff so he could get dressed.

 

Ray never showered at the gym anymore, because one queer guy could be in there incognito, but two was asking for trouble, especially if everybody else in there was already watching them, the only white guy in the place and the young boxer with the way-too-pretty smile. One accidental glance at each other and they’d be toast. He showered at home, or at the station if he did the gym thing before work.

 

Ray didn’t use the lockers here any more, either. It was too creepy in there with the other guys all looking at him like they wanted to cap him for busting Devlin. He wore his gym clothes under his other stuff and just dumped his duffle next to the ring, pulled off some layers, and strapped on the padding, then afterward he shucked the protective gear, toweled off as best he could, and pulled his layers of sweats and sweater and coat back on top of his gym shorts. It felt gross, but he was dry enough to stay warm.

 

It was usually kind of embarrassing doing even that much with Dani sitting there watching him with those silent eyes, because she was a girl, after all, even though she was skinnier than Ray. Hell, she probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelash if Ray stripped naked right there, considering what she did for a living. She probably saw plenty of guys who looked a hell of a lot worse than him.

 

She had her eyes closed again by the time he finished, and Jackson was knocking the jump rope handles against the bench in some kind of rhythm, boom-ba-boom-boom-boom. Ray sat down on the bench next to Dani, making it creak.

 

She opened her eyes slowly, not startled at all. She didn’t tense up, either, or inch away from him like she did around the gym rats. Her eyes weren’t hard when she looked at Ray. He wondered if that meant she trusted him, which, that was weird, huh, a crack addict and prostitute who trusted a cop. Maybe it was because Jackson liked Ray, or maybe it was because he hung out with Levon here, and Levon didn’t…

 

Or maybe she got the same kind of vibe from him as Levon. That didn’t make sense, he told himself, that did not make sense, because Ray liked girls just fine, even if he wasn’t sleazy and disgusting and abusive about it like the gym guys. Ray wasn’t like Levon, Ray was just…

 

He sat back a little on the bench. He looked in her eyes and he saw, he saw…she knew. And there was no way she could’ve known, except she did. She must’ve just been really good at vibing people out. Lucky for Ray, she didn’t talk. She might know, might’ve figured him out, but she didn’t talk to anybody that he knew of, so she wasn’t ever going to tell anyone.

 

He made a mental note never to introduce her to Fraser, though, because Fraser could get a clam to talk. Fraser could make an Eskimo Inuksha-whatsis spill its guts.

 

Ray twisted a finger into his bracelet, twisted it back out again. “You need anything?” he asked quietly.

 

She was still shivering, but she’d put her long legs down and stretched them out in front of the bench. She turned and looked at him, her eyes looking deep black under the sketchy gym lighting. Hungry. Her eyes looked…hungry. Only Dani didn’t go much for food.

 

“I don’t mean that,” Ray said. “You know.”

 

Which she did. She knew he was a cop, and she knew he was a clean cop; Levon had told her enough times that she wasn’t going to get any drugs or shit from Ray. Or money. He couldn’t even give her money for food for Jackson, nothing like that, because giving money to a crackhead was no better than handing them the drugs.

 

“I mean, like, could you use a cup of coffee? You look kind of cold. And Jackson, I was thinking…does he like macaroni and cheese? I loved that stuff when I was his age. Hell, I still like it.” He smiled, feeling kind of awkward. “There’s a diner on the corner, you know. You feel like going to get something? Jackson, he…he looks like he could use something hot to eat, and I sure could.”

 

She looked at him, not saying anything, for what had to be a whole minute while Jackson made explosion noises near the other side of the bench. Then she moved, and Ray had the weird thought that she looked like one of those marionettes, the long-limbed ones with the strings that you sometimes saw street performers using. “He likes it. He likes macaroni,” Dani said. Her voice was hoarse.

 

So Ray took them around to the diner and bought them food, and Jackson got to color on his placemat with a little set of crayons the waitress brought him and said he could take home with him. Even Dani choked down a few bites of food, which Ray thought that was pretty good, considering, and he had the waitress pack up the leftovers real carefully so Jackson, at least, could have them tomorrow.

 

“It’s pretty cold out, huh?” Ray turned his collar up with one hand and held the door for Dani and Jackson with the other.

 

She ducked out under his arm, holding Jackson by the hand, and made like she was going to walk home with him from here.

 

“Come on, I’ll give you a lift home.” Ray jerked his head toward the car. It had to be like fifteen degrees out; no way was he letting her walk that distance with Jackson, even if she did it all the time.

 

She shrugged and got back into the passenger seat, waiting while Ray belted Jackson in real good in the back. The kid really ought to have a booster seat, but since Ray still had the original-style seatbelts back there, he didn’t have to do anything funky with them to fit Jackson in, and he’d take it real slow and easy to their apartment.

 

He got into the car and started her up. “You got anything warmer than that little coat, Dani? ’Cause it don’t look like it’s rated for below freezing, you know?”

She coughed and looked out the window, shrugging her narrow shoulders. “Yeah,” she said. “Sure I do.”

 

Right. He looked over at her, checked out the jacket a little closer. It had quilting stitches on it, but it was thin like there was no insulating stuff in it, not puffy. There was nothing puffy about it. That damn thing she was wearing wouldn’t have kept her warm on a typical April day at Wrigley Field. Not that she and Jackson probably ever got anywhere near to going to an actual baseball game.

 

“It ain’t the cold,” she said.

 

“I know,” he said, “but I can’t help you with that.”

 

“Maybe it’s not what you think,” she said.

 

“Why’re you jonesing?” he asked. “You trying to stay clean?”

 

“Yeah,” she said, nodding hard, not sarcastic at all. Not even lying, he thought, but he knew if somebody held a couple of rocks in front of her, there was no way she was going to hold back from grabbing them. Her hands were shaking as she rubbed them together. “You got a smoke?”

 

“Nah, I quit years ago. But…okay. That’s easy enough.” He took her to a drugstore and bought her a carton of cigarettes and some other little stuff she needed, and a big jug of milk for Jackson, and cookies that Jackson picked out, chocolate and covered with multicolored sprinkles. Ray sneaked a cool-looking Matchbox car—not a GTO, a Mustang, but cool enough, and black—onto the checkout counter with the other stuff, and gestured to the clerk to put it in the bag when Dani and the kid weren’t looking.

 

He stowed the bags out of sight in the car, and they walked down two blocks to a thrift store he knew wasn’t too bad. He’d have preferred to drive them in this cold, but the couple of blocks gave her a chance to finish most of a cigarette without getting the smoke all over Jackson—or the GTO, for that matter.

 

They found a decent coat for her for only twenty bucks; it had real goose down insulation. Well, maybe it was duck, but that would do for Chicago, this not being the Arctic, and all. It was nice and puffy, anyway, and it was dark blue and had fake fur around the hood. He told Dani she looked cute in it, which she sort of did, if you squinted, and ignored that hollow look about her face. She’d need to gain about thirty pounds before she got to “cute,” but Ray didn’t mention that. They found a better coat for Jackson, too, bright green, which he liked.

 

Then they headed back down to the car.

 

“I’ll pay you back,” Dani said, holding tight to Jackson by the wrist as he strained to run ahead.

 

“Nah,” Ray said, waving a careless hand. “Merry Christmas.”

 

“It’s February.”

 

“I’m late. I suck at holidays. Sorry.”

 

“You think I’m some kind of charity case.”

 

“Nope,” Ray said. “I’m trying to ply you with gifts so you’ll let me be the kid’s trainer when he grows up. Gonna be a hell of a boxer and make us all rich.”

 

“B-ah!” Jackson said as weaseled his wrist out of Dani’s grasp and tried to give her the slip.

 

She was used to it, apparently. She snagged him by the hood of his new coat. “You want some of them cookies tonight, you better mind your mama,” she said, her voice hoarse in the cold.

 

She looked back at Ray. “You’re lying like a rug. He ain’t gonna be nothing if he never learns to talk.”

 

“You had him to a doctor?” he asked.

 

She looked at him like he was nuts—or like he just came down from Mars and said something totally clueless. Which apparently he did.

 

“He’ll go to school next year,” she said.

 

And, okay, yeah. School might help. “He’s a smart kid,” Ray said. “He’ll probably grow out of it, huh?”

 

 

He pulled the car into a spot a couple blocks from her place. Dani didn’t want anybody she knew seeing her and Jackson pulling up in a shiny black car and getting out with shopping bags, even though the bags only held their old coats, the leftovers from the diner, and the stuff from the drugstore.

 

“Bye,” she said to Ray, not meeting his eyes. “Thanks…for what you done.”

 

“Did it for the champ, here,” Ray said. “No big deal.”

 

He scoped the street out quick from force of habit—no sign of trouble—and helped Jackson out of the car, squatting down to his level. “Let me see your moves, champ.” Ray held up his palm for Jackson to punch his little fists into. “Right, left, right.”

 

And boom-boom-boom, the kid was pretty coordinated for a three-year-old, Ray thought, though he didn’t know much about child development and didn’t really remember much about being three himself.

 

“See,” Jackson said, real clear, pointing an expressive finger at Ray.

 

Ray grinned. “Hey, that’s pretty good. I read you loud and clear. What do you want to see, buddy?”

 

“Buh-d,” Jackson said. His brown eyes were very serious.

 

“Oh, you want to see my badge?”

 

“Mmm!” Big happy nod. “Buh-d.”

 

Ray pulled it out and showed him, keeping the badge cupped in his hand so it wouldn’t reflect too much. It wouldn’t do Dani any favors to make it obvious she was hanging with a cop.

 

“Pee,” Jackson said. “Peace.”

 

“Yeah, police. You got it, champ.” Ray kept his voice down. “You be good for your mom, and I’ll see you around the gym, okay?”

 

“Kay,” Jackson said, and he let Dani take his wrist and tug him towards home. He turned back once and tried to wave with his free hand, but he couldn’t quite get it around the shopping bag Dani was carrying.

 

Ray waved back anyway. Kids, he thought. Nothing fazed them.

 

 

But Ray hadn’t seen them around the gym. Two weeks after the coat-shopping thing, Ray’d gone to Canada with Fraser on the outside of a plane, and he hadn’t come back for four months. He was busy with getting back on the job, busy getting _Fraser_ back to Chicago and back on the liaising job (which took some doing). So he never made it over to the gym. He went to the cop gym for his own workouts, where he wasn’t the only white guy or the only _anything,_ and when he phoned Levon once to catch up, Levon said he was fighting out of a gym on the West Side and he’d found a pro trainer.

 

Ray’d been happy for him and kind of relieved that he didn’t have to go back to the old community league gym where he couldn’t even use the shower. He hadn’t thought a lot about Dani or even Jackson. It was like all the stuff before Muldoon was some past life or something, and he was in a new life now, a new phase of it, anyway. And he kind of was: he had his own name back, and a doozy of a fourth citation which the mayor handed to him personally, and he’d survived certain death in the mountains and crevasses of Northwest Freezerland.

 

And there was the whole Stella-taking-off-to-Florida-with-Vecchio thing, which was another whole big story and ate up a good month’s worth of his attention, too.

 

What it all added up to was that Ray hadn’t checked up on Danitra Brown and her son in all that time, and he should have. He damn well should have found out what the fuck was going on.

 

Now he wondered whether Dani had hung around the gym with Jackson while he was away. He wondered whether she’d thought Ray wasn’t coming back, which she probably hadn’t cared, but maybe she’d cared that Ray was one of the few people Jackson even tried to talk to. Then he wondered whether Jackson thought Ray wasn’t coming back.

 

That twisted Ray’s gut up even worse, so he decided to skip breakfast and get a jump on his paperwork for tomorrow, because he wanted to bug out early on Tuesday and go check up on Jackson. So he went down to the 27th, made “I’m not here” faces at everyone, signed out a huge armload of files, and took them back home to deal with in peace and quiet.

 

Fraser called once to shoot the shit, though Fraser would never have called it that, and Ray understood what Fraser wanted to know. “I’m good, Frase. Everything’s good. I’m cleaning up a pile of reports here. You’d be proud of me; I even spelled ‘ambulatory’ correctly.” He left out how he’d had to look it up twice in the dictionary. But, hey, Ray _owned_ a dictionary, which was more than most cops could probably say.

 

“That _is_ impressive, Ray.” Ray never got tired of that little twist of humor in Fraser’s voice, just as sweet over the phone as it was in person. “So you don’t need my help with them?” Fraser asked.

 

“Nah, it’s boring, but I’m handling it okay. What I want to ask, though…”

 

“Anything, Ray.”

 

Oh, yeah. right. Ray _wished. _He stopped himself just in time from saying that out loud.But, yeah, Ray knew Fraser really meant it, he just had no idea what kinds of things Ray _wanted_ to ask him for. “Can you come in to the station after you’re done over there tomorrow? I gotta go see Dani’s roommates and…stuff.”

 

He was pretty sure Fraser wouldn’t object to the “stuff,” which was seeing Jackson, but he already felt kind of pink about asking Fraser to come with him like he couldn’t handle it on his own. If he just added it to his list of errands, it maybe didn’t make Ray look like such a wuss.

 

“Certainly, Ray.”

 

So that was good.

 

Late in the afternoon, Mort called Ray at home with his findings on Dani: No reason to suspect foul play. Cause of death, massive heart attack brought on by inhalation of crack cocaine, no surprise there. They’d found the pipe under her body, tested the residue, blah, blah. It was over in moments, Mort said, and she probably wasn’t conscious most of that time. That squared with the witness’s phone call, who said somebody went down in the alley and didn’t move after that. So she didn’t suffer.

 

Someday, when Jackson asked, if he ever did, somebody could tell him.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

By the time Fraser came in to the 27th after his shift the next day, Ray’d whittled down the mountain of paperwork on his desk, and he was beyond ready to get out and stretch his legs. He pulled Fraser out of the building with him, happy to get out of there before any more major crimes showed up on his desk.

 

They got in the car and Ray drove over to Dani’s apartment, telling Fraser it would be quick.

 

And it was. Neenah was in; in fact, all the roommates were there, and Ray stood awkwardly in the doorway of the little kitchen, Fraser at his back, and told them the cause of Dani’s death. They all nodded like they weren’t surprised, either.

 

“Things weren’t going good with her,” one of them said, sitting down at the kitchen table and flicking absently through a pack of cards.

 

“Oh yeah?” Ray didn’t have his notebook out, but he was paying attention; he couldn’t really turn the detective in him off.

 

“You saw her, right? Sack of bones. She never ate nothing.”

 

Consistent with crack addiction; no surprise there, either, Ray thought. Plus, he’d seen her “eat.”

 

“She figured she was gonna have to give Jackson up, ’cause of no money. She had trouble getting dates anymore,” the other roommate said. “Ain’t no normal guy wants to fuck a scarecrow.” She had her hair done in a Tina Turner cut, tortured into straight spikes and a shade of blond that was more like orange. It was carefully styled, like she spent hours on it.

 

He noticed another thing: she wasn’t stick-thin like Dani, she was normal weight. They all were. Ray didn’t delude himself that these women never took controlled substances, but they obviously weren’t into crack at the level Dani had been. Maybe they were even sort of okay, given that they were hookers and operating outside the law pretty much every day.

 

He didn’t even take their names. Dani’s death wasn’t a murder, and although it sure was a crime that Dani was gone, it was nothing the Chicago PD had any say in, not any more. Dot it, file it, stick it in a box, six feet under.

 

That reminded him: who was going to bury Dani?

 

“What about a funeral?”

 

They looked at him blankly. The two he didn’t have names for rolled their eyes at each other, their meaning embarrassingly clear: _stupid cop._

 

Ray felt tongue tied. There was a way to ask this, but he couldn’t quite make his brain find the words.

 

But Fraser knew the right questions to ask: “Did she have a pastor, a church she attended?”

 

The girls at the table snickered. “Oh, sure, she was a regular church lady,” the girl with the cards said.

 

Neenah leaned against the cracked formica of the kitchen counter, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes. “Who got time for that? She had a kid. And she owed me two hundred bucks,” she added hopefully, like she was expecting Ray to fork it over.

 

“You got her stuff,” Ray said. “We left it here. Is it still gonna be here if somebody from the county comes to claim it in Jackson’s behalf?”

 

“Ain’t worth shit,” Neenah said. Ray noticed she hadn’t answered the question. He met Fraser’s eyes briefly, saw that Fraser had noticed, too. Ray decided not to press it, though. He’d let CPS worry about that. Anyway, it was probably true that Dani had nothing of value. A person as cracked out as her sold everything early on. When they had nothing left, they sold themselves.

 

It was pretty damn amazing, when Ray thought about it, that Dani had managed to keep Jackson, and keep him alive and well. It must have taken one hell of a strong will.

 

“What about her stash?”

 

“I think she smoked that up, that’s what killed her,” Neenah said. “Anyway, she didn’t smoke no expensive rocks. Cheap shit you can get around here easy. Half baking soda.”

 

“Oh, yeah?” Maybe Ray could get started on tracking down a dealer or two, not that it would really change things in the neighborhood, but like Welsh said, maybe there was one future Dani, one future Jackson, it could help. Probably the only memorial Ray could give her.

 

He felt extra warmth along his side, and somehow he knew that Fraser had inched closer to him, probably without anyone else noticing—still right there with Ray, on his wavelength, at his back.

 

“You got names?”

 

She snorted loudly. “Yeah, sure.”

 

The other two women looked at each other and laughed.

 

Ray pulled out his wallet after all.

 

“She owed me two hundred. Cash.”

 

His turn to give her the w_ho you trying to kid?_ face. He held out a fifty, pulling it back just out of her reach when she went for it. “Names.”

 

She padded over in her stocking feet and sat down on the third kitchen chair, the only other chair in the room.

 

“Raul,” she said after a minute. “Quinteiro. That’s his corner right there, five, six nights a week. Days, he’s at the high school selling it to the other kids. I’d love it if you’d get rid of that little prick.”

 

One of the other girls made a rude sound. “He won’t. Little prick’s only fifteen. Ain’t nothing the ‘nice detective’ can do but get him sent to juvie.”

 

“Maybe it’ll buy some time for one more Danitra,” Ray said.

 

“Don’t count on it,” Neenah said. “You gonna give me that, or you planning to rip me off?”

 

“Nah, that’s not me,” Ray said, handing the money to her.

 

“I’m still down a hundred fifty,” she said. She made a face that any guy could read loud and clear, and sat back in her chair a little, crossing one long leg over the other. “You give it to me, you and your good-looking partner here could get lucky.”

 

Ray felt his face heat. He didn’t look at Fraser. Instead, he stuck a finger in his ear like he was trying to clear it. “I did not hear that. I did not hear you just attempting to solicit two police officers, one of which is Canadian. Because I realize you are in a state of grief over your friend and I did not come into a house of mourning to arrest anyone today.”

 

She smirked at him, but he could see the cautious look in her eyes. Apparently she still wasn’t totally convinced Ray meant business—CPD business, not hers.

 

He turned to Fraser for help. “Tell me you did not hear her doing that, Frase.”

 

“Well, technically,” Fraser began, but Ray glared daggers at him. Fraser cleared his throat. “She could have been offering to share a lottery ticket,” he concluded in a strained voice.

 

“Yeah. Good, that’s good.” He turned his glare on Neenah.

 

She held up her palms and looked away.

 

“Would you or your roommates want to hold some sort of…memorial?” Fraser asked, which was a pretty smooth subject change, Ray thought. _Go, Fraser._

 

Neenah reacted like Fraser was talking Inuit. “She gone. Ain’t no words we can say going to bring her back. The City’ll bury her.”

 

“So we just let the City take her body and dispose of it like she’s the Monday trash pickup?” Ray shot Neenah a hard look. “She fell in an alley, you know. Did you know that?”

 

She shrugged.

 

“She fell in a filthy alley, and if some old lady hadn’t been looking out there watching that damn alley, Dani would have been lying there with the trash all night.”

 

Neenah shrugged again, a half-motion shrug that Ray read loud and clear: _I’m going to pretend not to care, and then maybe you’ll get out of my face and leave me alone,_ it said. “It’s what they say we are,” she said. “Trash. Maybe they right.”

 

“You don’t believe that,” Fraser said, beating Ray to it.

 

“What they say.”

 

“Yeah, they say a lot of shit that ain’t true,” Ray put in. “Why are you repeating it, if you know better?”

 

“Maybe so you get out of my face. I can’t bury Dani. I can’t take responsibility for nobody but me, and that is damn hard enough, _Officer.”_ Putting him in his place, on the other side of a big canyon of misunderstanding.

 

“You don’t want her, either?” He gestured at the kitchen table, which the other roommates were now draped over, drinking some tea that smelled even worse than Fraser’s.

 

“No,” they chorused. “Nope.” The one with the Tina Turner hair flicked a disinterested glance at him, then looked away again.

 

“Just let the City do it,” Neenah said. “They do it all the time. Lot of people die in Chicago without nobody to bury them.”

 

That got Ray’s back up, but when he looked at Neenah, all ready to say something sarcastic, he noticed stuff he hadn’t quite twigged to before. Maybe it was because she’d pushed her chair back so the light fell on her differently, but he saw now that her skin had this ashy dullness to it, her eyes were kind of red, and her face was getting lines where no twenty-three-year-old should have lines. She looked _tired. _

So he couldn’t bring himself to yell at her like he wanted, and he really did want to, especially because of the soliciting thing in front of Fraser, which pissed him off more than just about anything else. He gathered Fraser up with his eyes. “Danitra Brown does have somebody,” he told her over his shoulder as they went out. “He’s just too little to take care of it on his own.”

 

 

 

Fraser leaned close as they made it down the creaky stairs for what Ray hoped was the last time. “Ray, are you going to—?”

 

“Yeah, I am,” Ray said. “For Jackson.”

 

“Right you are,” Fraser said, and that, Ray knew, meant both “Good for you” and “I’m going to help.”

 

“You’re going to help,” Ray said aloud, wonderingly, not really making it a question.

 

“Of course,” said Fraser.

 

Because they were a duet.

 

Ray stopped at the curb. He unlocked the passenger door and pulled it open for Fraser, and only then did he actually look up and meet his eyes—God, so blue and steady and fucking gorgeous. Ray swallowed kind of hard. “Thanks, Frase.”

 

“Any time, Ray.”

 

Ray couldn’t help grinning as he got in the driver’s seat and peeled away from the curb. They headed downtown to make arrangements, figuring they’d knock that off the list before looking in on the little guy.

 

 

 

The City was happy to release Danitra’s remains for private burial. Ray signed papers to have her sent to a funeral home. Any one was good with him except for the one where he’d seen Fraser laid out from Bouga Toad juice. Fraser found a quiet little place close to Dani’s neighborhood, so they arranged to do a memorial and burial on Wednesday. Ray figured he could drop by her apartment one more time and let the roommates know the time and date. If they wanted to show, they could; Fraser and Ray would be there for sure.

 

Ray phoned Levon’s aunt and left a message for Levon, too. He hadn’t seen him in eight months, but Levon was a decent guy, and Ray figured he’d show if he could.

 

“Make sure you tell him it’s for Jackson’s mom, okay?” Ray said to Mrs. Jefferson. “Please make sure.”

 

“All right, son. Don’t you worry. I’ll do that.”

 

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

 

He shoved the phone in his pocket and sighed. One more visit to make. “You tired?” he asked Fraser.

 

“Not appreciably,” Fraser said, all chipper like he usually was, no matter what time of day or whether he’d slept at all, or whether he’d only had 30-second naps while walking down the stairs.

 

“Good,” Ray said. “’Cause I called Social Services and got us permission to visit Jackson.”

 

“That’s wonderful, Ray.” Fraser looked sincerely happy about that.

 

“You think?” Ray was grinning in spite of himself.

 

“I do,” Fraser said. “If I may make an observation…?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“You’re taking a great deal of interest in this case.”

 

“Yeah, well. I feel for the little guy. Always have.”

 

“Is there any special reason?” Fraser scratched at his eyebrow. “What I mean is, why Jackson as opposed to the many other children in unfortunate circumstances that you come across in the course of your police work?”

 

“Other than, he ain’t got no one and his mom just died, and even while he was alive his life wasn’t that great?”

 

“Well, there are thousands of other children in similar circumstances all over Chicago,” Fraser said. “Some of whom you have also interacted with.”

 

“Scatterlings and orphanages,” Ray said. “You’re right.” Maybe Fraser wouldn’t notice Ray hadn’t answered the question.

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“Ah, nothing. Just, yeah, I know there’s plenty of crackheads’ kids and orphans and…I know. And I can’t do nothing about most of it. But I know this kid. And here’s one little thing I can do.”

 

“Bury his mother and comfort the bereaved?”

 

Ray shrugged. “It sucks, but it’s something I can do.”

 

“I think it’s a worthy and selfless act, Ray.”

 

Ray glanced at him: Fraser was looking at him with that open, sincere, beautiful look. How was it there were not angels and seraphims and cherubs and stuff painted and carved in St. Stanislaus’ with that face? Maybe there were, and Ray had just never been able to look high enough to see them.

He smiled at him just to see Fraser’s eyes crinkle up as he smiled back. “You’re proud of me, huh?”

 

“Very,” Fraser said.

 

“Didn’t think I’d do something like this?”

 

“On the contrary, Ray. I’ve seen your heroism in the line of duty. You’ve put your life on the line every day as a policeman for eighteen years, and many, many times for me personally, or alongside me in the pursuit of Justice.” He said it just like that, with a capital J. “This is simply a good deed, by comparison.”

 

“That’s me,” Ray said, laughing. “I am all about the good deeds, Fraser.” Which was so not true it made Ray laugh, but it felt good to laugh.

 

“I think you are,” Fraser said, obviously hearing it the way Ray intended, as a joke, and disagreeing. “So no, it doesn’t surprise me.”

 

Ray shot him a smile, but only for half a second; he had to keep his eye on the road. They’d driven out of the Loop and gone south, through the South Side and back out, to a modest, working-class neighborhood with three-story houses in a lot better condition than the one Dani and Jackson had lived in. It was still modest, but way better taken care of. Families lived here, and fifteen-year-old crack dealers did not do business out in broad daylight on street corners.

 

The dealers were here, of course, it wasn’t like Ray didn’t know they were everywhere. But they weren’t out in the open selling the stuff that got hold of Jackson’s mother and wouldn’t let go till her heart gave out.

 

Anyway, it was nice to look around the cheap, decent little neighborhood and _not_ see probable cause for arrest playing out on every street corner.

 

They pulled in to a little yellow house with a double-size driveway. Room for a lot of cars. Which meant that this was not the kind of foster home where a kid stayed for long.

 

Ray shook his shoulders out and got out of the car. He wasn’t going to make it very far if he couldn’t even stand to look at the damn driveway.

 

 

The foster mom or caregiver or whatever must’ve seen them pull up, because the front door slammed open the moment Ray and Fraser got the car doors closed, and a mini cyclone whammed into Ray at thigh level. “R-eh!”

 

Ray brushed his hand over the soft reddish-brown curls. “Hey! Hey, there, Jackson.”

 

“He’s been looking forward to your visit ever since you phoned,” a soft voice said. Ray looked up to see a woman standing there, smiling. She was on the high side of middle age, maybe even older than that, but her hair was still black everywhere, so it was kind of hard for Ray to tell. She had soft features and that ageless sort of look a lot of older black women had. She looked like a real nice lady, like a lady who cared, who could care a lot about a nobody kid from the crack-ridden streets who needed somebody.

 

She was neatly dressed in slacks and a sweater, the picture of calm and stability and all the things Jackson never had. She looked like a person who had _time_ for a kid. Time to read stories and take a kid to the park…and Ray found himself hoping real hard that this was the person who would take Jackson in.

 

Next to Ray, Fraser cleared his throat, and Ray realized he was staring like an idiot. “Easy there, guy,” he said to Jackson, untangling the kid from around his waist long enough to straighten up and stick out his hand.

 

“Yeah, I’m Ray—”

 

“—Detective Kowalski, yes, they sent your picture to my office,” she said, shaking his hand firmly, professionally. “I’m Martha George. Jackson’s caseworker.”

 

Oh.

 

“Not his foster mom, huh?” Ray said stupidly, tossing that fantasy aside.

 

“I’m afraid not. He’s a darling child, but I’ve already raised one family, and I have a daughter and three grandchildren living with me now.”

 

“Oh. Uh. That’s nice. Uh, I mean that you got grandkids.” God, he sounded so stupid.

 

She laughed softly, but kindly, in a way that said she didn’t think he sounded stupid at all. “I think I’m very lucky.”

 

Ray thought she was, too, but he felt a little tongue-tied, because he wanted to ask what was going to happen to Jackson, and at the same time, he didn’t think he wanted to hear the answer.

 

But she turned smoothly to his partner, thank God. “You must be Corporal Fraser,” she said, offering her hand to Fraser. “I’m told you’re Canadian.”

 

“Yes, Ma’am.” Fraser started into his whole “I first came to Chicago” speech, which usually annoyed Ray when he did it any more, because why the hell was it important how Fraser first came to Chicago and why he was still here, which he wasn’t going to explain at this juncture, anyway? But at the moment, Ray was actually grateful for the whole spiel, because it gave him time to squat down to Jackson’s height and ruffle his curls.

 

“R-eh!” Jackson said, whacking Ray in the thigh.

 

“Whoa! Hell of a right you got there. So, yeah, it’s me, again,” Ray said. “You probably thought I got lost up in Canada in all that snow, huh?”

 

“Snuh?” Jackson said, looking up at the sky. It was gray and overcast, no surprise for mid-November, but it wasn’t near cold enough to snow yet.

 

“Yeah, that kind of snow, right, only in Canada, way up that way, up by the North Pole.”

 

“A-ta?” Jackson said.

 

“You got it, up near Santa.” Ray smiled. “Hey, it’s gonna be Christmas in another month. You waiting for Santa?”

 

Jackson gave him a blank look. “M-uh,” he said.

 

Oh, shit.

 

Ray blew out a big sigh. “Hey. Santa will still come,” he said.

 

Jackson squinted up at him like he didn’t believe it. Obviously Santa was available only if Dani was. Or maybe Jackson wanted Santa to bring Dani back. And he couldn’t tell the nice caseworker lady that, or whoever was taking care of him. He couldn’t tell anybody anything, damn it. Even Ray only vaguely understood what Jackson was trying to get across, and when he thought about it, Ray realized he’d only ever seen the kid a handful of times, ever. Like a dozen? Maybe a few more, but only a dozen or so times with real conversations, if you could even call the exchanges he had with Jackson “conversations.”

 

“Santa will come,” Ray said. “I know Santa. See my buddy there? He’s from way up north in Canada, which is close to the North Pole where Santa’s workshop is. If Santa don’t come down here and bring you something good, my buddy will go track Santa down with his dogsled and give him a ticket.”

 

“Kay,” Jackson said, looking at Ray with eyes that said he wanted to believe him, but he’d wait for the evidence.

 

Ray rubbed his eyes. Time for a distraction, he figured. Fraser was still talking to Mrs. George, asking questions about Jackson’s foster care and listening carefully to the answers. Ray knew he’d get the whole story out of Fraser later.

 

He put up his palms. “Show me your moves, champ, one, two, three.”

 

Jackson did it just like Ray’d showed him, boom-boom-boom, only even faster than he did last year, and that last boom kind of smarted, even, cramping up Ray’s hand a little.

 

“Hey, whoa, you got me good.” He stood up, stretching his legs and pulling his glove off to rub the cramp out of his hand. “I think you’re ready for the next lesson, champ. And that is, you got to stay light on your feet and keep moving so they can’t get you, you hear me?”

 

“Yeh,” Jackson said, tilting up on his toes a little to show he understood.

 

“You got it. I’ll bring you a jump rope next time you and me box,” Ray said. He pantomimed covering up with his left and jabbing with his right, and Jackson laughed.

 

Ray saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, _red—_yeah, it was Fraser, his big hat clutched in one hand and rubbing his eyebrow furiously with the other one. He looked like he was trying to swallow a stupid, totally charming grin, and his eyes were soft. _What the fuck?_ Ray thought.

 

Fraser actually blushed and glanced away.

 

Ray turned back to Jackson. “So you like your new crib? They treating you good here?”

 

Jackson still had a half smile on his face, but he didn’t respond to the question, he seemed to just ignore it, like it had no relevance. Ray couldn’t figure out if the kid even had a clue what Ray was asking him…or if he didn’t know what the answer was. What was “being treated good” if you had grown up like Jackson did?

 

Mrs. George cleared her throat. “Could I speak to you for a moment, Detective Kowalski?”

 

“Sure. Fraser?” Ray nodded toward Jackson.

 

“I’d be delighted,” Fraser said, and came over and crouched down to introduce himself.

 

“A-ta?” Jackson said.

 

“I told him you know where Santa lives,” Ray said.

 

“Oh, I see. Well, that’s actually a mis—”

 

“Do not. Do not confuse the champ there with your magnetic north cra—uh, stuff, okay? Just you know, elves and workshop and the whole deal. Reindeer. You can tell him about the reindeer.”

 

“Understood.”

 

Fraser turned back to Jackson as seriously as if he was briefing a security detail on the Canadian Prime Minister’s visit. “We call them caribou up in Canada,” he started in.

 

Mrs. George led Ray a down the driveway a bit, out of Jackson’s earshot.

 

“This is only a temporary situation for Jackson,” she said. “I think he realizes he won’t be staying here.”

 

“He’s a smart kid.”

 

“Yes, he is.”

 

“Is somebody going to see him about the…the speaking thing?”

 

“Oh, yes, he’ll be evaluated by a speech pathologist as soon as we can get him an appointment. A doctor’s seen him already and didn’t find anything really wrong with him. His hearing seems good.”

 

“Good, that’s…good,” Ray said. “He always seems to understand me fine…except just now. That was…new, that total no-comprendo.”

 

“It’s probably a sign that he understands more than we realize,” she said with a sigh.

 

“He hasn’t figured out about Dani,” Ray said. “Uh, at least, he keeps asking for her.”

 

She sighed again. “Since he can’t ask in a specific way, no one quite knows what to tell him.”

 

“He’s gonna think she abandoned him,” Ray said.

 

“He might feel that way in any case.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, I get that.”

 

“So are you going to find him something good?” Ray asked. “A family, someone to adopt him?”

 

She gave him a pitying look, a look that twisted Ray’s gut all over again. “He…he might be quite difficult to place.”

 

Ray swallowed. “Why? He’s a sweet kid. So smart, so…”

 

“Frankly, Detective, he’s got several strikes against him from an adoption standpoint. Adoptive parents have to go through a lot of work and expense to get a child. They’re looking for perfect children if they can possibly find them. And they often can, in other countries if not in the US.”

 

“Perfect, what do you mean? He _is_ perfect. He’s beautiful, he’s smart, he’s real good with his hands, you should see him put together stuff, with the blocks and the…” he gestured.

 

“I’ve seen that, yes. He’s very good with Legos. But…Detective…”

 

“Ray,” he said.

 

“Ray, then. He’s the son of a mother known to have been severely addicted to crack, which is believed to cause birth defects. Prospective parents would suspect problems even if he showed no symptoms. But his speech problem is serious; he doesn’t speak well for a two-year-old, let alone a child of his age. That’s a red flag in a child from…his situation. It may only be the tip of the iceberg. There could be learning disabilities, maybe even some retardation. He may need special help with education or living skills. We don’t know. He’s four-and-a-half, which is fairly old for adoption, considering most people are looking for infants or at least younger babies.”

 

She sighed deeply. “And on top of all of that, he’s biracial.”

 

“He’s beautiful,” Ray countered. “He’s a super kid. Why should people care what color his parents were?”

 

“I don’t know. I’m with you on that point, but the sad fact is that people do care. To a black family, he’ll look white. To a white family, he’ll look black.”

 

“That’s stupid. He’s just a kid. He ain’t black, he ain’t white, he’s just him.”

 

“I agree,” she said, her eyes searching his. Her eyes were soft and sad and open. “But I’m giving you the facts as I understand them.”

 

“What, you mean you don’t let people adopt unless they look a lot alike?”

 

“Oh, no,” she said. “Well, there’ve been arguments along those lines in various places, but when you investigate them they turn out to be highly politicized and not very concerned with the needs of individual children.

 

“When it comes down to it, we have a child who’s in need of a home. We’re not going to worry too much about what color the parents are. Of course, we’ll only allow him to go to parents—or even one parent—of good character who can afford to support him. Finding a mixed-race couple would be, well, it’d be like finding a needle in a haystack. There are a lot of them around, but only a tiny, tiny percentage are looking to adopt, and virtually all of them will be requesting a newborn.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, I get that. People want a fresh start with a kid. They want to be the influence from Day One. They don’t want to deal with a kid who came from a tough life before.” He scratched his neck. “Which, mostly, it was just being poor that was the problem. Being poor and not having family, except for his mom, and she couldn’t do it all by herself.”

 

“That’s very perceptive of you, Ray.”

 

“I’m a perceptive kind of guy,” Ray said. “Sometimes. Sometimes I miss what’s right in front of my face.” He sighed.

 

“Don’t sell yourself short, Detective. I assume there’s a reason they let you wear the shiny gold badge.”

 

“Yeah, sometimes I wonder.”

 

“I think you made a difference for Jackson and his mother,” she said.

 

“Nah, not me. Until Sunday night, I hadn’t even seen the little guy in months. I—I was away. In Canada, and then…well, it doesn’t need exploring at this juncture.”

 

“I’ve seen your record,” she said. “What’s public, anyway.”

 

“Jeez.” He blushed a little.

 

“And I think you probably did more for Jackson than most people ever have.”

 

“How could you know that?”

 

“Evidence, Detective. Jackson said more words to you in two minutes than he’s said to all the rest of us in the past thirty-six hours.”

 

He looked up, surprised. “Really?”

 

“Really. And you’re the only one who’s understood most of what he said.”

 

“You just got to get to know him,” Ray said. “He gets his point across great without a lot of words. He’d make someone a great son.”

 

“I think so, too.” She sighed. “But there’s really no magic wand I can wave that will bring a couple along who wants a child of his age and background. So he’ll be hard to place.”

 

“And if he doesn’t get placed?”

 

“He may have to remain a ward of the courts and live in a group home situation with counselors and…”

 

“But no parents. No actual family. Nobody who loves him so much they’d…put him first. He’ll be a client, but he won’t be anybody’s son. If he does make it through school, who’ll show up for graduation?”

 

She looked startled. “Well…that’s putting the cart far ahead of the horse, but…essentially you’re right. He won’t have a family in the usual sense.”

 

“Or in any sense.”

 

“Yes.” She looked away. “Would you be surprised if I told you that a very large percentage of those you arrest and send to jail came from foster care themselves?”

 

“No. Actually, no. We know a lot of criminals came from fu—uh, messed-up families, bad situations. It’s just, by the time they get in the system, most of them have gone too far, done too much wrong to be rehabilitated. It’s too late for a lot of them.”

 

“The social safety nets we have in place for children at risk like Jackson are just not adequate,” she said. “Too many children slip through the holes. If we don’t have stable adoptive families willing and able to take them in, we’re limited in what we can do for them.”

 

“It’s wrong,” Ray said. “It’s wrong to hang a kid out to dry like that when he ain’t done nothing. A kid should have a family. Especially him. If any kid should have a family it’s him.”

 

Ray didn’t know why he added that, he didn’t know why he even thought it, because of course there were tons of other kids, even right here in Chicago, who needed somebody. Still, it made a weird kind of sense to him when he said it.

 

Her eyes were sympathetic…and knowing. Like she’d been there, gotten personally involved with cases even though she knew it was asking for pain. “I assume the police department has tried to track down his mother’s relatives?”

 

“Yeah.” Ray frowned. “I got somebody on it, back at the station, but…” And he did, he had Frannie working on it when she had a free minute here and there, but so far it didn’t look good. “Since it was an accidental death and there’s no actual crime with respect to Jackson, it’s, um. On the back burner, you know. Way back.”

 

“Yes,” she said. “I know. Though you do realize that even if you do find a relative, they’re not obligated to take him in, and they might not want to.”

 

“Yeah,” Ray said. “Yeah, I realize.”

 

And Fraser was suddenly there next to Ray, damn it. He’d heard it. He’d heard what Mrs. George said.

 

“In that case, it might be better for all concerned if they were not found,” Fraser said.

 

That was a weird thing for Mr. Dot the Is and Cross the Ts to say. But Ray got it. “Well, we’ll look for them, anyway.”

 

“You don’t think _you_ might…” Mrs. George held up a hand. “Sorry, I—I shouldn’t.”

 

“No, it’s okay. Say it.”

 

“Are you married, Ray?”

 

He shot Fraser a glance, then looked back at her, shaking his head. “Divorced,” he admitted. “She, uh. She didn’t want kids.”

 

“Oh. Then you did.”

 

“Yeah.” He smiled, feeling pink. “Yeah, okay, so maybe that’s another reason why I’m all worked up about this case. I wanted kids and I can’t get them. Jackson needs parents and he can’t have them. Yeah. It doesn’t take Dr. Freud to figure it out.”

 

“I see,” she said. “In situations like this one, single-parent adoptions have a pretty good chance, but of course, in your line of work…”

 

“Right. It’s dangerous. Plus there’s plenty of times I’m out all night on a case, or I’m on call, so I gotta light out of there at a moment’s notice.”

 

“I understand. It would be too hard to manage without a spouse,” she said. “Although I’m sure there are policemen who find themselves thrust into such a situation without choosing it, but I imagine they usually have someone to share custody, not to mention other family, a support network.”

 

“Or they quit and find another line of work,” Ray said.

 

She sighed. “But you’re right: it’s a hard risk to ask a child to take when you have a choice in the matter. I’m sorry to have pried.”

 

“Nah, it’s okay. If I was you I’d have asked me the same thing. Seeing as I’m the only one who—”

 

“Well, we’ll certainly hope someone comes along who might, also,” she said smoothly. “Occasionally we get lucky.”

 

Ray looked over to see Jackson sitting on the lawn, holding Fraser’s Stetson and turning it around and around by the brim, looking at it seriously, like maybe he could figure out how it was put together. The kid had such an active mind. Who was going to see that he got the opportunity to develop it? Some counselors in a group home or a series of foster families? Listening to him, would they think he was stupid and treat him that way?

 

Jackson finished examining the hat and picked it up and set it on his head. It covered his eyes completely, which he obviously found hilarious. He got up and stuck his hands out like he was blindfolded, and made his way over to Ray in a pretty straight line. The kid would rock at Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

 

Jackson’s laughter got the adults laughing along with him. Even Ray, who hadn’t felt like laughing in what seemed like a real long time.

 

“Hey, Frase,” Ray said, elbowing him for emphasis. “I’m gonna have my nose all out of joint now. Who’s your partner?”

 

“You are, Ray.”

 

“Well, you’re letting some other guy wear The Hat.”

 

“I’m afraid he coerced it out of me,” Fraser said, hanging his head. “He’s very persuasive.”

 

“I can fix his wagon,” Ray said, and flicked the hat off Jackson’s head, laughing. “I got it now, champ. You can’t catch me!” He broke into a run, just fast enough to get Jackson running after him, and Fraser joined in, and when Mrs. George finally called a reluctant halt to the chaos by announcing that it was Jackson’s bedtime, the three of them were tumbled down in the grass, laughing their sides off.

 

When Ray finally caught his breath, he noticed three things: the Stetson had grass stains, Jackson had the hiccups, and Ray felt lighter than he had in a long time, maybe since the moment he got hauled up out of that crevasse.

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

The funeral place called after Ray got home and asked him what he wanted them to dress Dani in. Turned out they didn’t have anything at all for her; the rags she’d been found in had been bagged and tagged at the station and stuck in an evidence locker somewhere, and anyway Ray knew they had to be crap, not the kind of thing you buried someone in, not if you cared.

 

So he ended up having to go back to the apartment one more time, after all. It was late, after eight by the time he got there, but he found the Tina Turner girl home, and he told her about the burial and asked her to find something of Dani’s for the mortician to put on Dani.

 

“Something warm,” he told her. “Her best thing that’s warm, okay?” She rolled her eyes at him, and yeah, he was being stupid, it wasn’t like Dani would need anything warm ever again. But Tina (he called her that in his head now, because it was better than “Miss”) came back out with a pair of gray slacks and a pink fuzzy sweater that looked kind of nice, and he said so.

 

“I didn’t think she owned anything nice. Never saw her in anything that looked this good. Or this warm.”

 

Tina gave him another look, and then she looked away. “It’ll fit her.”

 

Oh. “This yours?” Ray asked.

 

She shrugged. “Just take it. Not like I can do anything else for her.”

 

“Yeah,” he said. “Except show up tomorrow. Tell Neenah; tell your other roommate, too.”

 

“All right.” She shooed him out without saying a word, with just the look in her eyes and the tilt of her head, and he understood: a cop visiting her place was bad for business, even though she and the other girls obviously didn’t bring “dates” back to this place.

 

Ray started to go, then hesitated. He didn’t know anything about how these ladies operated, whether they were on their own or had some pimp giving them shit all the time. He hadn’t seen any bruises or obvious signs of abuse, so maybe they were staying out of trouble okay, but he knew the brutal equation of the streets: poverty equals vulnerability. It was just a matter of time before their number came up and he saw them again, in a paddy wagon if they were lucky, in the meat wagon if they weren’t.

 

He pulled a business card out of his wallet and handed it to her. “Listen,” he said. “If you get anybody giving you trouble, if you ever need help, you call. I’m at the 27th, Major Crimes.”

 

“What’s with you?” she said.

 

He knew what she meant. Why the hell did he care? White guy, cop, guy with a nice car in a neighborhood where anybody with a nice car was up to no good. Queer guy—he figured that even if Dani hadn’t told her, she had the same vibing power as Dani’s, because it was clear from her body language she wasn’t expecting any hassle from him. Anyway, he couldn’t have looked to her like the kind of guy who usually took an interest in helping working girls. So why did he care?

 

“I knew Dani. From the gym, you know. I like the kid. I, uh, I wanted kids, and I don’t probably have a shot at having my own no more, not since I got divorced.” He swallowed. “And, see, I never gave Dani my card in all the time I knew her. Maybe if I had…” he looked away.

 

He felt something, a touch on his shoulder, and turned back. She was looking at him from under that carefully sculpted, spiky curtain of bottle-orange hair, and her eyes were…real. She was seeing _him, _not the queer, white cop with the car. Maybe seeing him for the first time. “You’re the one gave her that coat,” she said, obviously realizing it only now.

 

“Yeah. That was me.”

 

“You sent the toys for Jackson, and the food.”

 

He nodded uncomfortably.

 

“You some kind of do-gooder?”

 

“Me? No.” He almost laughed, and a sound did come out but it was kind of strangled-sounding. “Guess I was just trying to be a friend. I kind of sucked at that, huh?”

 

She touched his shoulder again, giving it a little push this time. It wasn’t a go-away push, it was something else, a communication. “No,” she said. “You helped. Ain’t a lot of people out there really want to help a girl like Dani who don’t want nothing out of it.”

 

He thanked her for the clothes, and went down the creaky steps one more time, stopped at the bottom, and turned. She was still there, watching him go. “What’s your name?” he asked.

 

“Tina,” she said.

 

“Yeah,” he said, “I kind of thought it was.”

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

 

They held a little memorial service at the funeral home the next day and the burial at the public cemetery just after. All three of Dani’s roommates showed up, and so did Levon, which Ray was not surprised, since he’d always known Levon was a class act.

 

The girls were still glancing sidelong at Ray once in a while like they thought he was a little bit crazy, but there was something else in their attitudes now, something that hadn’t been there the other day when they were giving that Oscar-worthy portrayal of “couldn’t care less.” He pretended he didn’t see the tissues wadded up in their hands.

 

Ray and Fraser took them all out for an early lunch afterward. They drew a few stares at the neighborhood diner, which wasn’t so unusual for Ray and Fraser, especially when Fraser had the red uniform on, like he did now. But it was probably a little weird for Levon and the girls, seeing as, unlike Ray, they didn’t make a habit of eating lunch with a Mountie. They were a pretty rag-tag crew: three hookers, two cops (one of them Canadian) and a boxer.

 

And then Ray and Fraser got in the car and went down to where Jackson was staying. Everybody had agreed it would be way too traumatizing to drag Jackson through the service and the burial, even though they never had the casket open or anything. The kid wouldn’t know what he was seeing or understand it, and they couldn’t explain in a way that would make any sense, not and have a clue what Jackson actually understood, because he couldn’t tell them.

 

Ray remembered that when he was that age, grownups did a better job of explaining stuff to him by telling him stories, stuff he could visualize. Ray didn’t know what kinds of stories Dani had told Jackson, though he tried to get Neenah to remember at lunch. Turned out it was the third roomie—whose name was Charisse—who had anything like a clue, and all she remembered was that they were fairy tales, like Brothers Grimm-type stories. Some of those were pretty creepy, if Ray remembered right.

 

Anyway, since Ray didn’t remember the specifics of those too well—he’d probably tried to block them out because of the creep-factor—he was off the hook for telling them. So it was on to plan B: he’d have to find some books that Jackson would like and read them to him. The more Ray thought about it, the more he liked that idea, and when he opened his mouth and said so, Fraser was positively enthusiastic. Well, no surprise there. The guy had been raised in a _library,_ for Chrissakes.

 

Before the funeral, Ray had gone in to the station early and worked a few hours. Welsh had given Ray the rest of the day off if he wanted it, and Ray was probably taking most of it, but he wanted to save time to look up the teenybopper drug dealer the girls had put him onto. Fraser had gotten the time off, too—the new guy was seriously Not Thatcher, which Ray appreciated, even though Thatcher had been a hell of a lot prettier.

 

Still, there was plenty of time to go see Jackson, and Ray really wanted to do it. Maybe it was stupid, but he felt like going to see the little guy now was somehow kind of including him in the day’s events, even though he couldn’t be included. This way, if Jackson ever asked, they could tell him, somebody could tell him, “Your mother got a decent burial, and somebody who cared about you came and read you stories and hugged you a lot afterward.”

 

They stopped off at a bookstore and Ray asked a clerk to help him pick out some little kids’ books for Jackson. Most of the books had moms, sometimes on every page. Ray didn’t know whether it was better to get books like that, or books that never mentioned moms. He looked at Fraser for help.

 

Fraser shook his head. “I never had books of that sort, so I doubt my experience would shed any light on the issue.”

 

“Of that sort? What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“My grandmother considered books written purely for entertainment to be frivolous and likely to encourage the development of bad character.”

 

“You mean, you never read _any _children’s books? That is seriously weird, Fraser.”

 

“Well, I did before age six, when my…ah, when my…”

 

“Your mother?”

 

“Yes. When my mother could get them. But I actually, well, I don’t really remember any of them. I have only vague impressions. But after…afterward, when I lived with my grandparents, I didn’t have that sort of book. So as regards the situation that is confronting Jackson now…I can only say that Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ would probably not be the best choice.”

 

Ray knew he had to be staring. He managed not to let his jaw drop, though. Jeez, first it was a buckthorn bush and Arctic tern instead of a Christmas tree and turkey, and now it was _Milton_ instead of _Mother Goose?_

 

“So that’s what you read?”

 

Fraser nodded. “Among other things. Good literature, a lot of nonfiction. Aristotle. Herodotus. Homer, when I was a bit older. My grandfather considered Homer a little too racy for a six-year-old, so he made me wait for that until I was ten. I remember being very glad when I could get hold of something more age-appropriate, such as manuals on snowmobile repair. And one on baseball—I loved that book.”

 

“A baseball story? Oh. Well, those can be good. What was it, like, _Nine Make a Team _or _Curious George Plays Baseball?_ No, wait, you were six, which in Fraser-brain years is like twenty-two, so…something more along the lines of _Shoeless Joe_ or _The Natural_ or something like that?”

 

“That’s very funny, Ray, but I’m still referring to nonfiction.”

 

Ray spread his hands. _“The Lou Gehrig Story?”_

 

“Oh, no, it was just a little manual on the principles of the game, the basic rules, and so on.”

 

“And that’s where you learned the count-the-stitches stuff?”

 

“Well, no. That came later.”

 

Okay, Ray was confused. “So you think we should read a baseball manual to Jackson? Or, you know, one on boxing? ’Cause he’s already got an interest in boxing.”

 

“No, I just meant to say that…” Fraser glanced down at his boots for a minute, and then back up at Ray, and he had this look in his eyes that Ray had only seen when Fraser was gazing across miles of tundra. “I meant to say that I know it won’t help him if the adults around him all try to avoid the subject of mothers, of his mother.”

 

“I got you.” Ray put his hand on Fraser’s shoulder. “I do want to help,” he said. He wasn’t just talking about Jackson, and from the way Fraser’s shoulder twitched under Ray’s hand, Fraser knew it.

 

“You are helping, Ray. Just by being here.”

 

“Good to know,” Ray said. God, he wanted to hug Fraser. But, yeah, the bookstore, with the perky, helpful little clerk standing not fifteen feet away, was not the place. Ray sighed. He’d stopped counting all the hugs he had not given Fraser in the last few days.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

Jackson liked the books. He sat next to Ray on the living room sofa in his temporary home and listened real quietly through three of them before he got fidgety. Which meant he had a better attention span than Ray, that was for sure. Ray’d just read three books, and he didn’t have a clue what they were about, except he thought there was a bear in one of them. It wasn’t till Ray closed the books and stacked them on the coffee table that Jackson said anything about his mother, and then it was only his quiet, “M-uh?”

 

“She loves you,” Ray said. “She always did. She still does, even when you don’t see her. You get that?”

 

“M’uh,” Jackson said. His eyes got real big, shiny, like he was going to cry.

 

Ray slid his arm around Jackson’s back and hugged him.

 

Jackson said something that sounded like “Wi-m’uh-tee. Kay.”

 

But Ray understood well enough. He gave the little shoulders a squeeze. “I don’t know, Big Guy. I hate to have to tell you this, but even the grownups don’t know all the answers.”

 

He heard a soft footstep behind him: Fraser, coming from the kitchen where he’d been having a conversation with Mrs. Douglas, the foster mom.

 

When Ray looked up, Fraser’s face was…Ray didn’t remember seeing that exact expression on Fraser’s face before. Like there was something about the sight of Ray reading to Jackson that shook him up a little. Huh.

 

Fraser cleared his throat, looking meaningfully at Jackson, then at his watch. Oh, yeah. Nap time.

 

Ray patted the soft auburn curls and stood up. “All right, kid. I gotta go, but I’ll come visit again real soon, I promise. Maybe I can take you to the park or something.”

 

“P-ah. Paht!”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, the park. That’s good. That’s real good.” Ray smiled even though he felt like bawling. He bent down and gave the little guy a monster hug that rattled his little bones, and Jackson laughed and yelled “R-eh!” at the top of his lungs, and Ray nodded to Fraser so they could get out of there before Ray lost it.

 

Maybe, Ray thought, he could at least be a friend, the friend he could have been to Jackson’s mother, and hadn’t been, which it didn’t matter now whether it was her fault or his or a little of both.

 

And was this not the story of Ray’s life? He wanted one thing, he had to settle for another. But at least Ray was happy, mostly, even if things weren’t working perfect all the time. Even if there were still things he wanted that it didn’t look like he would ever get, what he had to settle for wasn’t all that bad. He had Fraser as partner and friend, and he had a job that made a difference, and now he even apparently had a kid that he could take to the park once in a while.

 

And, Jeez, how stupid was he to be feeling the slightest bit sorry for _himself?_ Because he was going to go back to his apartment tonight and phone his mom and tell her all about it, and she’d listen and she’d understand. And she’d love him no matter what, _because she was his mom._ Ray Kowalski, age thirty-nine, still had a mom. Benton Fraser, age forty, did not, and had not had one since he was six.

 

Jackson Brown, age four, did not have a mother. He did not have anyone who was going to love him _just because_ Jackson was hers. Barring a miracle, he probably never would.

 

It broke Ray’s fucking heart.

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

  
They pulled out of the driveway in silence. When Ray was in one of his moods, Fraser was usually a chatterbox, reeling off Inuit and Trapper Joe stories and walrus anecdotes, but he was quiet now. Not in any kind of weird way; he just stared out the window pretending really hard to be interested in the same old Chicago scenery. That meant he knew perfectly well that if he so much as opened his mouth, Ray was going to lose it right there in the driver’s seat and start crying like an idiot.

 

It wouldn’t be the first time Ray’d lost it in front of Fraser, but all the same, Ray’d prefer not to do it now. For one thing, it was broad daylight, and they were still in the middle of the lunch-hour traffic jam, so Fraser wouldn’t be the only witness.

 

After a few blocks of concentrating on nothing but driving, Ray felt the tight knot in his chest ease up, at least enough to talk. He didn’t need an Inuit story, and he was taking the risk of getting either that or a lecture out of Fraser, but either of those would be better than this nerve-wracking silence.

 

“So let me guess what Mrs. Douglas told you.”

 

“Ray,” Fraser said in that_ tone _he had, that soft, kind of crackly, _sad_ tone, and that was what told Ray he had hit the fucking bull’s eye, which he did not want to hit.

 

Somehow, saying it aloud made it easier to begin to _get_. Maybe it was one of those “a trouble shared is a trouble halved” things, like his mom always said. Ray didn’t know. All he knew was, a trouble shared with _Fraser_ was somehow a little easier to bear. He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up, not caring.

 

“Nobody’s going to want him, Fraser. Jackson Brown is going to fall through the cracks.”

 

“It appears so, Ray.” Ray glanced over to see Fraser hang his head.

 

“What? What’s that about?”

 

Fraser pulled a long sigh. “I’ve lived in Chicago for four years now,” he said. “I’m still not accustomed to the idea that you truly cannot help everyone. In small towns you can at least attempt to help all of the citizens who are in need of assistance, though sometimes they’re not amenable to assistance. But here…there are thousands of people in trouble that we can never even meet, and of those we can meet personally, we still can only help a small handful. I find it…rather disheartening.”

 

“That is true. That is the hard truth, Fraser. There actually are problems a brave and kindhearted Canadian Mountie can not solve. That’s life in the big city. It sucks.”

 

“Yes, it does.” He was still hanging his head down, his chin on his chest.

 

And damn, that did something to Ray. That twisted up his insides something fierce, seeing Fraser just _giving in_ like that. Giving in to Ray in a disagreement, like over calling backup officers to a crime scene before storming in like a superhero without a cape—_that_ was okay. That was a good kind of giving in. Giving in to Dief’s request for a third piece of pizza, that was just human, and it was okay too, once in a while, even if it usually meant the wolf got stomach problems and had to be put outside for the night.

 

But agreeing that nothing could be done to help a great kid like Jackson, that was not okay. That was chickening out, that was letting Ray off the hook, or that was letting _America_ off the hook for this, and Christ, Ray better write down the date, because this had to be some kind of record: the only thing Fraser did less than chicken out himself was let somebody he believed in off the hook when they could’ve helped.

 

And damn it, he believed in Ray. Ray knew he did. Fraser believing in him had made Ray believe in himself again, starting the day Ray drove a car into a lake for him and his ideals.

 

They were _right _about the impossibility of helping everyone. There was nothing Ray or Fraser could do about the thousands of other children who didn’t have enough of whatever they needed. But there had to be something that Ray could do for Jackson besides read him stories and teach him to box.

 

 

And as Ray slid the GTO into his parking spot and killed the engine, it hit him like a fist what he wanted to do. What he was going to do, if they’d let him.

 

It was going to change _everything_.

 

He leaned forward until his forehead was resting on the steering wheel and felt the world tip, slide, tumble away.

 

He was back in the crevasse, sliding down, head over heels over head, aiming for the center of the Earth. It probably was bottomless, like Fraser said. Or Ray’d fall through to Antarctica and the momentum would carry him on out into space, head over heels in the black nothingness, forever and ever, amen. Tip, slide, tumble on down, nothing to break his fall.

 

Except two strong arms, and a calm steady look in blue eyes: Fraser. How the hell did Fraser keep his cool every single time he stared death in the face? How did Fraser manage to help _Ray_ keep his cool? Because if there was one thing Ray did well it was freak out. It was one of Ray’s freakouts that got them in the crevasse in the first place, though from what Fraser said, it probably would have happened anyway, sooner or later.

 

Ray was calm, too, even though they were going to die, or maybe because of it, because the only possible rescue would be a miracle, and he was going to die here with Fraser in the middle of a case, trying to save the world. Which, if Ray’s number really was up, that wasn’t a bad way to go.

 

So they sang. Fraser sang the Franklin song and Ray hummed and yipped along, and he really was calm, because this was just dying, he’d been in that spot before…or maybe it was hypothermia. It wasn’t like Ray didn’t care, but more like he knew he couldn’t do anything to change the outcome. If Fraser said they were goners, they were, and there was no use whining about it.

 

Anyway, Fraser usually pulled a miracle out of his Stetson at the last minute, even if the Stetson was a couple hundred feet up on the mountain with the rest of their stuff.

 

And Fraser did. Turned out it was one of Fraser’s freaky Trapper Joes come to life who got them out, and whaddya know, Fraser really did know guys like that, like Delmar, with a beard down to his beltline and the strength of a polar bear. He didn’t have a lot of marbles, but he had a heart the size of the Yukon, sturdy ice screws, and a hell of a lot of good rope, and that was all it took. He hauled them up through two hundred feet of ice and pulled them free, laid them out gasping like fish on the surface of the mountain.

 

So the Ray-and-Fraser story wasn’t over after all. In fact, when they came up out of the crevasse, it was kind of just beginning.

 

 

Ray opened his eyes, pushing the memory back where it belonged. A warm weight lay on his shoulder: Fraser’s hand.

 

“I want him,” Ray said.

 

“Ray?”

 

“I want to adopt Jackson.”

 

Fraser looked at him real steadily, like he had in the crevasse. Just like he had a day and a half later, when they got done filling out miles of paperwork and looked up at each other, exhausted, and Fraser said, “Do you really want to go on an adventure, Ray?”

 

Looking for Franklin had been fantastic, the kind of thing you told your grandkids about, or your brother’s grandkids, anyway, seeing as you apparently weren’t going to have any. But it wasn’t near the adventure this was going to be. The Quest lasted two months and then it was over.

 

This one would be permanent. This one was a lifetime commitment.

 

“Jackson needs somebody, Fraser. I could be that somebody. I’ve been thinking a lot about this.” Which he didn’t realize he had, but he _had,_ he had actually been thinking about it since the moment he found Dani’s emaciated body lying in that alley.

 

It was one of the reasons he’d felt kayoed by the shock. It wasn’t like Ray hadn’t expected Danitra Brown was going to end up dying real young—someday. He must’ve added it all up unconsciously or something. It was just, he’d _known_ at the moment he realized she was gone that Jackson wouldn’t end up with anyplace good to call home.

 

And he’d known he wanted Jackson to call him Dad. Even though the kid might never be able to say it. He wanted Jackson to know there was someone on this Earth who _wanted _ him, just like he was, no changes necessary, who was going to do whatever it took to see that he grew up in a real home, loved and cared for.

 

And it was something that Ray could actually _have._

 

If Ray couldn’t have the other things he wanted, okay, he got that. He had already accepted most of that. He had no lover, but he had the best partner and best friend ever, and by now he knew he didn’t even _want _a lover if it couldn’t be Fraser, because another person would just get in the way, complicate things. Ray could deal with things this way as long as Fraser stayed and didn’t leave him, and Ray had a lot of hope Fraser was going to do that, seeing as he’d come back to Chicago to continue his partnership with Ray when he absolutely didn’t have to.

 

Fraser really didn’t seem to want a lover, either. Yeah, sometimes Ray saw him with this wistful look on his face and Ray wondered if he was remembering whatshername with the guns and the kids, or whatsername-the-other-one with the guns and the treachery, or whoever else Fraser might have in his past that he wasn’t talking about. But Ray’d seen Fraser’s back, the ugly scar there on the surface, marking where the bullet went in, and Ray knew that Fraser had unseen scars far worse. Ray could see why a guy who’d been through what Fraser had been through wouldn’t want to risk it again, not with anyone.

 

Ray thought he might be an exception, though, at least in the sense that Fraser did love him, even if it was in a brotherly way. He knew Fraser trusted him. Fraser had proved it over and over from that day in the submarine under Lake Superior until the present, and he was still proving it.

 

Privately, Ray thought that Fraser _would_ have risked his heart with Ray, for Ray, he really would have…if only he wasn’t quite so heterosexual.

 

But he was, of course: straight and straitlaced and proper. Gay just didn’t go well with the life Fraser wanted for himself; Ray could see that, and he’d mostly accepted it.

 

He still thought about it, though, sometimes, especially on the colder nights, rattling around alone in his apartment while Fraser was across town in his little place, probably tucked up tight, telling his screwball campfire stories to Dief. Sometimes, when he lay trying to sleep, Ray pictured a slightly less straight version of Fraser—wanting him. And he imagined it was Fraser’s hand, not his own, that touched him in the dark and brought comfort.

 

 

Fraser’s hand. Fraser’s hand moved. Oh. Right. They were still in the car. The parked car, parked at Ray’s place, and he hadn’t driven Fraser home first, which God knew what Fraser thought of that, whether he thought Ray would ask him to walk the fifty-eight blocks home, or something.

 

And Ray was just about to say, “I’m sorry, I thought you could come up for a cup of coffee and we could go over the kid-crack-dealer case,” when Fraser moved. He only moved like a fraction of an inch, but it was enough to bring Ray’s brain back on line. He closed his mouth and shook out his neck and shoulders.

 

Fraser had apparently been fidgeting with his hat while Ray sat thinking, and now he stilled his hands, moving the left one down next to him on the seat and just resting it there. Almost like…it was weird, it had to be one of Ray’s hallucinations again, but for a moment he expected Fraser to keep moving that hand till it was on Ray’s leg.

 

Ray had to be unhinged. But, yeah, he could see what his wacked-out brain was getting at. Fraser wanted to offer a…a gesture. Of comfort and understanding. Like when Ray had felt that urge to hug Fraser in Dani’s apartment and had maybe even started to move, but then stopped himself, because it wouldn’t have looked right in front of other people.

 

Fraser apparently didn’t have to use any self-control to stop himself from doing something similar here, because he wasn’t inclined to do it in the first place. Fraser putting his hand on Ray’s leg, even in the privacy of the car, would have sent the wrong signals, would have given Ray false hope, so Fraser didn’t do it.

 

Ray was pretty sure of that. If Fraser had wanted to signal interest in Ray, he could have done it any time in the last two-and-a-half years, and he hadn’t. Ray’d given him plenty of openings, plenty of hints. True, he hadn’t come out and beat him over the head with it, but he’d sent plenty of vibes, vibes that even a Canadian could understand. Fraser was a savvy guy and the best detective Ray had ever worked with. There was no way Fraser could have missed Ray’s Fraser-wanting vibes.

 

Ray had even _told_ him he wasn’t a prude and that he’d try anything. Ray had given him a huge opening after the buddy-breathing incident, asking whether anything had changed between them that could put a different spin on the way Fraser chose to save his life, but it turned out, unfortunately, that to Fraser it _was_ just a life-saving technique, nothing more. Ray had held onto Fraser’s hand way too long a half-dozen times, looked him in the eye the way straight guys just did not do. Tugged him into bathroom stalls for whispered conferences. Climbed over him in the car and once in a tiny submarine and lots of times in a sleeping bag. Hell, Ray had snuggled up to him in his sleeping bag almost every night on the quest, until it got warm enough to quit doing that, and even so, he maybe pretended a few times that he was colder than he really was, just to make the snuggling-up part last longer.

 

And Ray had told him he loved him. Although maybe that last one wasn’t always as clear as it could’ve been, because when there were other people around, Ray always qualified it with words that made it sound brotherly or platonic-friend-like. He wasn’t stupid enough to say stuff like that out loud in the police station. If he was going to do that, he might as well stand on his desk and just announce his queerness and get it over with.

 

But he’d been clear about it with Fraser at other times, and Fraser had always answered, “And I, you, Ray,” and smiled at him happily from behind that buttoned-up Mountie reserve.

 

So Ray figured that was all Fraser could give.

 

And if that was all Ray could have, it was enough. He had his right hand and his imagination for the rest, and he had Fraser in his life in pretty much every other way, and there was nobody else on planet Earth who had that. He didn’t even envy Ray Vecchio for Stella, that was how much Ray valued having Fraser’s presence in his life.

 

Maybe Ray could have fatherhood, too, after all. He’d once wanted a wife and kids and had finally accepted he wasn’t going to have that old dream. Well, maybe he could have a close adult relationship and parenthood, too, as long as he was open to having both of them come to him in ways he hadn’t anticipated.

 

 

Fraser’s hand had gone perfectly still. Ray sighed. The silence was probably getting too weird. Ray wondered if that might mean something.

 

“You don’t think I could hack it, do you?” Ray was fishing and he knew it, giving Fraser an opening to lay a dose of cold reality on him if he needed it. He didn’t look at Fraser.

 

“I didn’t say that.”

 

“Well, do you think I could?”

 

Fraser’s hand moved then, right up to his eyebrow to scratch at it. “Ray, if this is something you really want to do, I’m sure you can.” He cleared his throat. “I hope you’ll consider very carefully first to make sure you’re not choosing this course of action out of a sense of guilt.”

 

“Who, me? No. No, that wouldn’t work.”

 

“I know that, Ray, having been the recipient of care delivered by guilt-ridden caregivers.”

 

Ray looked up quick to check out Fraser’s expression, but it was calm, like he wanted Ray to think he had gotten used to that guilty-caregiver thing so long ago that it wasn’t anything to him now but an old memory.

 

Except the thing was, Ray’d seen Fraser during the Muldoon case. He’d seen him on the quest, so soon after. He’d seen him lying in his sleeping bag with tears freezing in their tracks down his face.

 

He knew it wasn’t just an old memory. It was a thing that still had an effect on him, that maybe dictated some of the ways Fraser was, some of the weird shit the guy came up with.

 

“Look, Fraser. You’re right I feel bad about what happened to Jackson, but Dani made her own choices, and there’s nothing anybody could have done to talk her out of them. I’ve thought about this. The only thing I could’ve done would have been to track her down when she was using, bust her for child endangerment, and get the kid taken away from his mother sooner.

 

“Maybe he had a crappy life with her, but maybe not. You saw the kid. He ain’t been starved and he ain’t been abused. I never saw any evidence she ever hurt him or I would’ve been on her like that.” He snapped his fingers to emphasize how quick. “And…she was his mother. His only mother.”

 

Fraser cleared his throat. “That’s exactly what I was going to say.”

 

“Well, I get all that,” Ray said. “I want Jackson for me. I want him to be my kid.”

 

“That’s the only reason that will work,” Fraser said. And that funny look was back in his eyes, that shiny look.

 

And that made Ray want to hug him yet again—no surprise. Instead he knocked Fraser on the shoulder with his knuckles and said, “Thanks, buddy,” and sighed. And then he mentioned the cup of coffee and figuring out how to stake out the fifteen-year-old crack-dealing entrepreneur, and the world tilted back up more to normal.

 

One day at a time, he told himself, and he and his partner got back to work.

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

It only took Ray twelve hours to come up with a list of Major Reasons Why Ray Would Suck as Somebody’s Parent, and right at the top of the list was the fact that he sucked at most things involving interpersonal relationships and emotional contact (Exhibit A: his failed marriage to The Stella), and parenthood was even tougher than marriage. At which, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Ray had sucked (see: Exhibit A).

 

“What if I’m no good at it?” Ray asked Fraser on the way in to the 27th the next day. “ What if he’s like…like a puppy, Fraser?”

 

“A _puppy_?” That was Fraser’s _Ray has clearly lost his mind_ tone.

 

“No, I mean…I told you about my little dog, that little dog I had. How he got run over and I had to take him to the vet and—”

 

“That situation doesn’t apply to a child.”

 

“I know, I know that, I’m not talking about that exact situation, but, look. I couldn’t save my little dog. I loved that little dog like he was my own kid. Or I thought I did. But I had to have him put down.”

 

“It was the compassionate choice, Ray.”

 

“Yeah, I know, but…so after that I never got another dog, because that’s what happens to dogs. They chase cars and the cars win, and if the dog doesn’t die on the street he gets the needle like some scumbag murderer.”

 

Dief whined.

 

“Not you, wolf. You’re a wolf, anyways.”

 

Dief barked agreement.

 

“That little dog loved me, Fraser. Even more than I loved him, he…what was great about having him was he thought I hung the sun and the moon. I was crazy about him and he was crazier about me, and in the end I failed him.

 

“I never figured out how to stop him from going after the cars and he got run over—and his little chest, Fraser. His ribs were crushed. He couldn’t get enough air, and it obviously hurt like hell, and he looked up at me with these big brown eyes like he was asking for help, and I didn’t want to, I didn’t…but I had to. I had to take him to the vet and get him to give the dog a shot.”

 

“What was his name?”

 

“What, you mean Dr. Martin?”

 

“No, I mean the dog. What did you call him?”

 

“Mostly ‘hey, Mutt,’” Ray said. But he smiled in spite of himself. Trust Fraser to ask a question that had nothing to do with anything. “His name was Prints.”

 

“Oh. That’s, well, interesting, Ray. A lot of people seem to name their dogs with noble titles. There was a Duke in the K-9 unit at Depot, and a Queenie at my posting in Moose Jaw…”

 

Ray found himself grinning, despite his worry. He rubbed his eyes. “Oh, Jeez, Fraser. That’s not it.”

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“It was ‘Prints.’ Like fingerprints.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Stella hated the name. It reminded her I was a cop.” He shook his head. “She hated the dog, too. You know, she probably would’ve done better marrying my brother. He bought Dad’s whole thing about cop work being dirty work. He works in a stuffy office and wears suits all day. With crispy shirts.”

 

“So your brother’s a banker?”

 

“How’d you know that?”

 

“Crispy shirts,” Fraser said, like it explained itself.

 

Which it did. It wasn’t till he caught himself smiling that Ray realized he felt better.

 

 

 

When they got in to the station, Frannie snagged Ray before he got halfway around her desk. “I found them,” she said.

 

“Found who?” he yawned, trying to cover his mouth and talk at the same time, which he didn’t have a lot of success at that.

 

“Jackson Brown’s maternal grandparents.”

 

Ray’s heart sank. “Oh, God, they want him.”

 

She got a strange look on her face. “Well, no, Ray, I found them in the county records. They’re both deceased.”

 

Jesus. “How long ago?”

 

“Sixteen years,” she said. “A car accident. Danitra was just ten years old.”

 

“What…where did she live after that?”

 

“Most of that information’s locked up in private files, but I found a caseworker still on the staff at Social Services who remembers her, a Mr….” she snagged a slip of paper off her desk and consulted it. “Greg Parsons. He says she was shuttled back and forth, from one relative to another, because none of them really seemed to want her, and then finally she was placed in foster care, and she pretty much got shuffled around by them, too. She was a good kid, apparently, not a troublemaker, but she was way too old and too…”

 

“Black,” Ray said. “She was too old and too black to get adopted; where’ve I heard that before?” He sighed hard.

 

“You’re probably right,” Frannie said, frowning. “And she had this learning thing, she needed extra help in school, and they couldn’t seem to find the right person to do it, and she just…” she trailed off helplessly.

 

“She fell through the cracks,” Ray said.

 

“I guess. Actually, she got moved from one foster home to another, maybe four different ones. Until she was fourteen and gave somebody the slit—”

 

Ray choked. “Slip, Frannie. She gave them the slip. Don’t get that one wrong, _please.”_

 

“Slip, slice, slack, whatever. The point is, she ran away at age fourteen and was never tracked down and…”

 

“Recaptured, yeah.”

 

“Well it wasn’t _jail,_” Frannie said.

 

“Tell me that after you’ve seen more of these unwanted kids,” Ray said. He thanked her and went on over to rescue his messy desk from Fraser’s obsessive paper-arranging. But his heart wasn’t in it, and he let Fraser throw away a year’s worth of his takeout-menu collection without a protest. All he could think about was adopting Jackson.

 

He had no idea in hell how he was going to make it happen. He only knew he had to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

 

They staked out Raul Quinteiro, kid crack dealer, on his favorite street corner the following night. They borrowed a female decoy officer from Vice and sent her into the neighborhood dressed like one of the local working girls, with her usual backup officers parked in a van nearby to listen in on her wire.

 

Ray hated to do it, but he borrowed a Ford from the 27th’s motor pool so that nobody in the neighborhood who might remember the GTO from the last few days would associate the operation with Neenah, Charisse, and Tina. The girls didn’t need any heat.

 

Between the time that they parked and the time that Quinteiro arrived and started slouching around near the doorway of the corner cigar shop, Ray and Fraser had a full hour of sitting in the car. Ray did not do sitting quietly very well. In fact, he didn’t do sitting _still_ all that well. Within the first five minutes of that hour, Ray was tapping his feet, tapping the steering wheel, and getting ready to bang his head on the window or something. He finally caved in to the freakout going on in his head and started putting some of it on external speaker.

 

“I want to adopt him, Fraser. I just don’t know how I’m gonna actually _do _it, and I don’t know how in hell I’m gonna convince a judge that a loser like me would make a good dad for a kid like Jackson. He’s gonna need doctors or speech teachers or maybe both, and he might have to get special ed. or something, even if they do figure out why he don’t really talk. And what if he never does? Then he’ll always need some kind of special help, and what if something _does _happen to me?

 

“They got a point, there, Frase. You got to admit they got a point. I am in a hazardous occupation: I have bad guys shooting at me and I have a crazy partner who makes me jump off high things into large bodies of water even though I can not swim.”

 

“Well, you can swim now, Ray. You did just fine when the Henry Allen sank.”

 

“That is not the issue.” Ray pointed a finger at him. “Focus, Frase. You think the stats on girls like Dani are bad? They’re not much better for cops. Cops burn out; they get nervous breakdowns; they get injured like Vecchio, or worse. Sometimes it gets so bad they commit suicide. The kid could be orphaned all over again.”

 

“You’re not going to do any of those things, Ray. You have a strong will to live and a positive attitude, and when you have a son, you’ll…” he choked on the word a little.

 

Ray looked over, though he could only see the part of Fraser’s face that was lit by a stripe of streetlight.

 

“When you have a son, you’ll put him before your career.”

 

“Aw, Jeez. Frase.” Ray’s hand was on Fraser’s before he was even aware he had moved it. Which, okay, maybe that was a little presump-whatsits, taking liberties or improper or something. They usually needed to fall off at least a small fire escape before Ray got to grab Fraser’s hand and hold on. Too late now, though. He squeezed Fraser’s hand hard.

 

Fraser looked at Ray’s hand on his, not pointedly, not like he was telling Ray to move it, but just like he was noticing it. Then he looked back out the window. He didn’t move his hand.

 

That was all kinds of cool, Fraser was the coolest straight guy Ray knew, but there was enough light shining into the car and enough people around on the streets that Ray knew he was asking for trouble if he kept it up. He gave Fraser’s hand another squeeze and let go, reluctantly.

 

He’d have to have let go soon, anyway. Just the feel of Fraser’s hand under his, smooth skin over solid muscle and bone, made Ray’s dick twitch and start to perk up, and this was so not the time and place for any dick-twitching or perking up.

 

“I hope you’re right,” Ray said finally. “I hope I will put him first. I sure didn’t do that for my dad or for Stella, but I think…maybe Stella didn’t need me to, and…”

 

“It was inappropriate of your father to try to pressure you into making a career choice to please him.”

 

“Yeah. I know. I think he even figured that out by now.”

 

“You’ll have to remember that when it comes time for Jackson to choose his career. If he chooses something you don’t appreciate…”

 

“I’ll bite my tongue,” Ray said. “I been on the other side of that conflict, and I know how it can hurt a kid when his dad’s not proud of him.”

 

He thought for a minute. “But if he chooses drug dealer like that little creep Quinteiro, I’ll have something to say about that. I’ll arrest his ass myself.” He looked at his watch, wondering if Quinteiro was ever going to show up.

 

Fraser smiled. “I don’t think you’ll ever have to worry about that, Ray.”

 

“No?”

 

Fraser shook his head. “He’s a beautiful, sweet child, Ray. He’s intelligent, sensitive. A lot, er…” He fidgeted with his hat. “A lot like you, in fact.”

 

That one sat Ray right back in his seat. He blinked, startled.

 

But Fraser was looking down, not meeting his eyes. “With you, he’ll grow up loved and cared for. He won’t become the type of person to prey on those weaker than himself. He’ll know the difference between right and wrong, and he’ll strive to do the right thing.”

 

“Wow. That’s, uh. That’s some prediction, there, Frase.”

 

Fraser cracked his neck once, twice. “I’d bet a lot of air on it, Ray.”

 

“Air.”

 

“Well, wagering money is against the law.”

“Freak.”

 

Fraser got that funny look in his eyes again, the one that made Ray want to shove him up against the far door and give him all the air he still owed him in one shot, mouth to mouth.

 

But that wasn’t going to happen, and thinking about it _did things_ to him that were not conducive to sitting quietly in a stakeout car with Fraser, did things that in a minute were going to force him to have to rearrange himself in his pants, which was a really uncool thing to do in a car with your partner sitting right next to you. Your _straight _partner. Who loved you…just not _that _way.

 

“Thanks,” Ray said after a minute to keep the silence from getting too weird.

 

Fraser looked a question at him.

 

“For saying you think I can do it.”

 

“I know you can.”

 

“Thanks, Frase.”

 

Ray was saved from any other reply by the arrival on the street corner of Raul Quinteiro, and after that he and Fraser were totally focused on the takedown, which the Vice crew handled smoothly and pretty routinely. He and Fraser were there just to observe, which they only got to do that because the guy was Ray’s case originally. Ray didn’t really need to waste an evening on this bust, but he wanted to make sure it went down okay and that they got the guy who sold Dani her fatal hit.

 

It annoyed Ray a little that he couldn’t be the one to slap the cuffs on the little prick, but it was much better for Dani’s former roommates if Ray and Fraser kept a low profile in this neighborhood and didn’t go around making obvious busts right and left.

 

It was better for the decoy officer, too, if she got to work with her regular backup; they had a routine down cold, just like any duet, just like the Ray-and-Fraser show: you set ’em up, I knock ’em down, boom-boom-boom. So Ray wasn’t going to interfere in that.

 

When they got the little prick back to the station, it was another matter: Ray caught the interrogation and Fraser sniffed out the fact that the kid wasn’t such a little kid after all. Fraser did that by licking the kid’s school ID and, Ray was not making this up, determining that the original laminating glue had been replaced with some _other_ glue made out of…Ray didn’t catch that part, because it came with a whole lecture about caribou hooves and how glue used to be made out of them. Ray’s eyes glazed over and he went comatose until Fraser got to the part where he said, “this identification card has been altered.”

 

Anyway, Fraser was right, which if gambling wasn’t illegal, Ray would have bet a lot of actual money on that, because Fraser being right about clues and stuff was a shoe-in. So it turned out Quinteiro was eighteen, not fifteen, but he passed okay in tenth grade because of being both short and stupid, which fact Ray pointed out to him with much relish. After which he pointed out with even greater relish that in the eyes of the law, eighteen was an adult, theoretically responsible for his actions, and he was gonna do serious time.

 

The kid was caught with enough crack on him to kill twelve Danitras in twelve alleys, and officers were even now getting a warrant to search his crib for more nasty evidence; a couple of teams from Vice were all set to carry out the search right away.

 

Ray was happy about the bust, he really was, but for some reason that he couldn’t pin down, he felt wound like a goddamn spring at the same time, and only Fraser’s perfectly timed grab saved Ray from busting a hole in another interrogation-room wall.

 

The prisoner had already been taken out, so nobody saw Ray nearly losing it except Fraser. Fraser held onto Ray’s wrist a long time, and Ray wondered about that a bit, but then he realized that he hadn’t yet convinced Fraser he had cooled off and wasn’t going to be remodeling the station’s walls. He rested his left hand on the wall, and his forehead on his left hand, and he breathed, and he enjoyed the feeling of Fraser’s hand around his other wrist for another minute or so.

 

Then he heaved a sigh and let the fight go out of him, and he finally said, “If you’re still holding my hand when the duty sergeant comes in here looking for the paperwork, it’s gonna be all over the station.”

 

Fraser let go of him, then, but not real quickly, which was just more proof that Fraser was the coolest straight guy in the known universe, because he obviously did not care what people thought, he only cared what really was.

 

And he cared about Ray.

 

Ray heard Fraser breathing, he heard him _breathing_ next to him, like Fraser was really close, and yeah, he was: Ray could feel the heat radiating off Fraser like it had in the Arctic when Ray snuggled his shivering body up near Fraser’s and basked in it. It wasn’t very cold in the interrogation room, but Ray wanted to press himself up against the Fraser-heat just the same, just like in the Arctic.

 

For an entirely different reason.

 

Well, okay, for some of the same reasons, just not any of the reasons having to do with preventing freezing to death.

 

And then Fraser’s voice was in his ear, that voice that made the shivery feelings whisper up Ray’s neck, and Ray was still worked up from the bust and the interrogation and the emotion, and that meant his defenses against the Fraser-voice and the Fraser-breathing and the Fraser-heat were kind of shot. The result of which was that when Fraser started speaking, that rumbly, velvet-soft voice went straight to Ray’s belly. He was hard in his pants inside of thirty seconds.

 

Consequently he didn’t register any of the actual words Fraser said, just the sound of them, and he also didn’t turn away from the wall, because eagle-eyes Fraser was so not going to miss his condition.

 

“Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray!”

 

“Huh?”

 

It was a good thing he stopped Fraser from saying his name, because if Fraser said that too many times in that voice, Ray was going to lose more than his temper right here in the interrogation room. Ray’s face was flushed; he could feel it. He had no idea how he had enough blood anywhere above his belt to cause that, let alone keep his brain going, because after that Ray-Ray-Ray-Ray-Ray business, he was so fucking hard that his cock was trying to unbutton his pants all by itself.

 

“Are you all right?” Fraser was asking.

 

“Oh, yeah,” Ray said, trying to breathe. “Yeah. I’m fine, I’m just…a little worked up, you know.”

 

“I gathered as much,” Fraser said.

 

“Look, Frase, do you think you could find me a…could you, I’m kind of…”

 

“Perhaps you should sit down,” Fraser said.

 

Hah—no way could Ray sit down at the moment, not without adjusting himself, any more than he could have sat down after shoving a two-by-four down his pants.

 

“Water,” Ray finally managed to say. “Could you…?”

 

“Certainly, Ray.”

 

And, damn he should have asked Fraser for coffee or soda, because then he would have had to leave the room. Ray’d forgotten that there was already a pitcher of water on the table, and some glasses; somebody had brought them in when they were finishing up the interrogation. It had sat there, sweating, the whole time, and no one had poured even one glass of it. There were still even ice cubes in it; Ray heard them clinking as Fraser poured him a glass.

 

Ray did a quick adjustment while Fraser’s back was turned—not that it hid anything, just made it not so hard to walk—and pushed away from the wall, gulping some air quick to try to get himself under control.

 

Fraser turned and pressed a cool glass into his hand.

 

“Uh. Thanks.” He drank some water.

 

“Feeling better?”

 

“Uh, yeah, I’m…yeah. Sorry about that, Frase, I…” He leaned back against the table for support, not thinking, just trying to drink water and breathe. He put his hand behind him and propped his butt on the edge of the table, letting it hold him up, and…

 

Fraser saw him. Of course Fraser saw him, because it was the stupidest move Ray could’ve made; it thrust his pelvis forward, making everything he’d been trying to hide really damn obvious. _Good one, Ray, why not actually shove your dick in Fraser’s face? ’Cause he didn’t get a good enough view from across the room._

 

Fraser’s eyes widened just enough to give away that he’d seen him. Fraser looked at the floor and shuffled his feet in his untied hiking boots.

 

Ray set the glass down, covered his face with his hand, and groaned. At least his hand was cool on his hot face; that felt good. “Frase, I’m…sorry, I just…it was the…thing, and the…I heard…I felt…” He couldn’t. There was no good explanation for this.

 

 “It’s quite all right, Ray, I understand.”

 

“You do?”

 

Ray slid his hand off his face.

 

“Well, yes…” Fraser cleared his throat. “I know that in moments of exertion, strong emotion, men can have certain reactions that don’t seem to fit the, er, the circumstances, since the endocrine system responds to…”

 

Ray glazed over again, but he let Fraser jabber, because it bought him a few more minutes to get himself under control and let the red drain out of his face, even if it wasn’t draining very well from other areas.

 

“It ain’t that,” Ray said. “You know it ain’t that.”

 

“It isn’t? Er, I’m sorry, I don’t…”

 

“Oh, I _know_ you don’t,” Ray said, pulling in a long, long sigh. “If you did, the end of this conversation might be a lot more fun.”

 

“Ray, I…”

 

Ray held up a hand. “No, it’s…I’m sorry.” How many times had he said that in the last two minutes? Sorry. He was. In every way possible. A sorry excuse for a partner and best friend.

 

Fraser pushed a hand into the back of his hair and smoothed it down a few times like he was afraid it was going to mess itself up without his attention.

 

“Frase,” Ray said. “I don’t mean to lay this on you. I know it’s hard enough—”

 

Hard enough. Jeez. He started over: “It’s tough enough being my partner half the time without this, too.”

 

“Ray you’ve threatened to punch walls on approximately one out of every ten days I’ve worked with you, and you’ve actually punched them, well, dozens of times. Obviously I’ve grown accustomed to it.”

 

Ray leveled a finger at him. “That is _not_ what I am talking about, Fraser.” Christ, he was going to have to lay it all on the line, in terms even a Canadian could understand. “I am talking about…that thing….that thing we don’t talk about. The _one_ thing…we don’t talk about.”

 

“Then why are we talking about it?” It wasn’t Fraser’s purposely clueless voice. It was his pointed, hard-guy voice, the one that nobody but Ray—and maybe one other Ray, currently somewhere in Florida—even knew Fraser had. It was Fraser’s _you’re about to cross over that line_ voice.

 

Except the only time Ray actually had crossed over Fraser’s line was the time Ray hit him, and _that_ was different. He wasn’t about to hit Fraser now, not now or ever again. He knew it and Fraser knew it.

 

So why that voice now?

 

Fraser never used that voice when he was mad. He used the snippy, pissed-off voice when he was mad, or he gave you the silent treatment (he did that on the trail up North one time) or he gave you the _I swallowed an entire college-level dictionary and I am now going to cough up words of many, many syllables _treatment.

 

But the hard voice as sharp as one of those knives he could throw? He only used that when he was scared. _Terrified._

 

Ray looked him in the eyes, searched there. Saw that Fraser was standing his ground, just a foot away from him, letting him do it. That took the fight right out of Ray. Fraser was afraid of something. But it wasn’t Ray, not really. So Ray needed to be buddies and help him out, here.

 

“Mostly?” Ray said. “Because I was trying to apologize for my, um, inappropriate reaction.” Which was finally gone now—nothing like getting a mad on to get rid of a hard-on. “I couldn’t lie and say it wasn’t inappropriate, ’cause it was.”

 

“As I told you before, it’s all right,” Fraser said, and the hard look in his eyes was _gone_ like it’d never been there.

 

“Most guys would’ve decked me.”

 

“I’m not most guys.”

 

“Yeah.” Ray smiled. “Don’t I know it.”

 

“Well, you aren’t, either, Ray.”

 

“That’s a fact.”

 

“We’re a duet,” Fraser said.

 

“Just…it wasn’t my endo-whatsis system.”

 

“Well, of course it was, Ray. That’s how the body—”

 

Ray held up a hand, stopping him. “That’s not what I mean. I mean it wasn’t just being on a high from the bust and wanting to hit something. It was your voice. Your hand…and your voice.” His face heated again.

 

“Oh. I’m…I’m terribly sorry, Ray, I had no idea.” Now Fraser was blushing, too, so at least Ray wasn’t the only one.

 

Ray sighed. “I know. I’m…look, don’t apologize. My hand’s still sore from that brick wall, Sunday. I could’ve broken it just now if you hadn’t stopped me. So…thank you.”

 

“Any time, Ray. I’m just…well, I’m just sorry to have caused you distress. It’s not my intention…”

 

“I know. I know, buddy.” Ray couldn’t keep the pain out of his voice. He knew Fraser didn’t mean to tease him.

 

“Ray, I’m s—”

 

“Yeah, me too, Frase. I, uh, we make a good duet, like you said. I wish it could be the way you want.”

 

“It _is_ the way I want, Ray.”

 

“Well, then, I wish I could be normal and want the same thing.”

 

“You are normal, Ray. I’m the one who can’t quite deal with…normal f-feelings.”

 

“Whoa. You said the f-word, Fraser. ‘Feelings.’ And guess what?”

 

Fraser looked a little bewildered. “What?”

 

“We are guys. We do not have to talk about those.”

 

“We don’t?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“Oh…well. Good. That’s…I’m…that’s a relief.” Fraser scratched at his eyebrow. “Ray?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“If we don’t talk about them, er…what do we do with them?”

 

Ray shrugged. “We act on ’em. You don’t want to act on them with me, that’s…okay.” He fidgeted a little against the edge of the table. “Because I’m good. I can deal with things they way they are. Because they are damn good this way, and I got no complaints.

 

“So I spend an extra hour at the gym, or, uh…I put on some music and dance. Fixes me right up.” He left out the part where he jerked off in the shower, or in bed between cool sheets, thinking about Fraser’s hands, Fraser’s mouth.

 

Fraser’s eyes were shadowed. It was probably the bad fluorescents in the overhead lighting, but it made Fraser look…sad. God, Ray hoped it was the lights. He couldn’t stand to think Fraser was pitying him.

 

“Ray, are you all right?”

 

“Never better, buddy.” Ray yawned and pushed himself off the edge of the table. “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride home.”

 

When Ray got home he skipped the dancing and the shower and went right to the jerking-off part, because how much was a guy supposed to be able to take in one night? He fell asleep between cool sheets, with Fraser’s name on his lips.

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

In the morning, Ray had a mountain of paperwork to tackle, and Fraser apparently had his own mountain at the Consulate, because he didn’t show up to liaise after lunch like he usually did on a Friday. Ray tried not to read too much into it. Fraser had seemed okay when he dropped him off at his place the night before, and although they’d kind of had it out about Ray’s thing for him, it wasn’t like it had stopped Fraser from any of the stuff he’d done with and for Ray in the past two-and-a-half years.

 

And Fraser had known about Ray, in varying degrees of detail, almost all that time.

 

So it had to be that Gillis loaded Fraser down with work today, and Fraser’d just forgotten to tell Ray he wouldn’t be coming in.

 

Ray had stuff to do, anyway. He had to get through the week’s reports, or Welsh was gonna have his badge. Getting suspended would be a great way to convince a judge that he’d make a good dad for Jackson.

 

He grabbed a sandwich at his desk and used his lunch break to start looking up information about how a single guy adopted a kid, and then he made a few phone calls. It didn’t take long to track down Martha George, and Ray called her and told her what he was thinking and got her advice. He took lots of notes, too, so he’d be able to tell Fraser in detail when they got together after work, ’cause Fraser would ask him a million questions and…

 

Whoa. Ray was thinking like Fraser was in this with him. And he wasn’t. Ray didn’t even know if Fraser was planning on getting together with him after work. They always _did_ on Fridays, but nobody’d said anything about it last night, and after that doozy of a talk they’d had about Ray being totally _queer_ for Fraser,maybe it _wasn’t_ such a given.

 

While he was making himself crazy about that, his phone rang. It was Vice with some news about the Quinteiro case: they’d seized all kinds of evidence from his place, plus more drugs, and even names; it was going to lead to a lot more arrests and maybe getting a shitload of that deadly crap off the streets. Ray knew it was just a stopgap, but, hey, score one for law enforcement today.

 

Welsh was apparently getting the same good news right around the same moment; he had his office blinds open, and Ray could see him perk up as he listened to someone on the phone, then look over at Ray with a not-totally-pissed-off expression. Welsh not totally pissed off was what passed for a good day in the bullpen. Yeah, now Welsh was giving him a thumb’s up, too. Whoa. That was, like, a gold star. Plus, you know, when Welsh looked over he actually saw Ray doing his paperwork, so…hat trick, Ray figured.

 

He whooped out loud and dialed Fraser at the Consulate before he remembered that it was slightly possible Fraser was taking a Ray break, at least long enough to get over the trauma of Ray getting wood over him the night before.

 

But before he could reconsider calling, Fraser picked up, sounding pretty normal, and Ray went ahead and told him the news.

 

“…and get this, the little freak kept detailed records of what he sold to who, and when, and they got the proof in the little bastard’s own handwriting that he sold Dani her last hit.”

 

“Oh, dear,” Fraser said.

 

“Yep. So we get to charge him with drug-induced homicide. That is a Class X felony. So when I told him serious time? He has no idea how serious. They tack fifteen to thirty years on top of any other sentence, mandatory. He thinks taking first-year algebra at age eighteen is bad? He is going to be the oldest tenth grader _ever.”_

 

He took a minute to catch his breath.

 

“Well, er, congratulations, Ray. I, ah…did you need any help with anything else relating to that case? Mr. Gillis has me reviewing security arrangements for a new Canadian exhibit at the Field…”

 

“No, I’m good. Just another bunch of papers here; Vice is catching most of the really boring stuff. They got a Who’s Who of drug users in that neighborhood, not that anybody’s surprised. But we’re not really interested in those names. Where Major Crimes gets involved is, Quinteiro’s notes also name his suppliers. The kid’s got real good spelling for somebody who’s got no common sense. He is actually gonna be happy to be in jail, because on the streets they’d be gunning for him. It’s what they say: drugs make you stupid.”

 

“Well. Good work, Ray.”

 

“Thank you, Fraser. You’re part of the team; it’s your collar, too. Nobody licks evidence like you.” He chuckled.

 

“I’m sure that’s true.”

 

“Believe it. So…he keeping you late, or are you finished at the usual time?”

 

“Ah, no, I’ll be finished work at five.”

 

“Good, you want to go celebrate?”

 

“Ray, I…I’ve got something to…there’s something I have to…”

 

There it was. The hesitation. The thing Ray used to dread would happen, but that never happened, not in the whole two-and-a-half years of their partnership, not even on the quest. Not even when Ray snuggled up to Fraser in a sleeping bag every night.

 

He’d gotten an obvious hard-on in front of Fraser, _because _of Fraser, dozens of times. It was kind of unavoidable out there on the trail, once the weather got warmer. Inevitable when they stayed in a cabin together, too, enjoying summer in the North, watching it thaw out briefly. Fraser’d seen it all before.

 

But they hadn’t talked about it. Not in so many words. Not till last night, when Ray suddenly just _had_ to come clean about everything.

 

He was kicking himself for it now, six ways from Sunday.

 

What the fuck was wrong with him? Why, when Ray had something going good, did he always grab for just a little bit more and blow the whole thing to hell?

 

He’d done it to Stella, wanting more of her time. Wanting her to kick back and go dancing with him instead of putting in umpteen extra hours at the office, which she said she had to do to get ahead. Always wanting more than she could give.

 

Apparently he’d just done it to Fraser, too.

 

Goddamn it.

 

“Fraser, I’m…look, you know I can’t get into it here. But, but I’m sorry. I’m sorry I fucked up. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

 

“It’s all right, Ray.”

 

God, that voice, what it did to him. It wasn’t fair. It was totally fucking unfair that Fraser had a voice that could do _that_ to Ray, when Fraser didn’t want to do anything else to Ray—at least not the things Ray had in mind when he had that voice in his ear.

 

“If it was all right you wouldn’t be avoiding me.” God, he hoped nobody in the station had heard that.

 

“I’m not. I’m not avoiding you, Ray.” Fraser’s steady, talk-him-down voice. A sigh. Then: “There are a few things I need to take care of after work. So I won’t be available at five, but perhaps later, when I’ve completed my errands?”

 

“Sure. Um, let me take a wild guess and assume you don’t want to go knock back a few with the Vice guys.”

 

“That, ah, wouldn’t be my first choice, no.”

 

It wouldn’t be Ray’s, either, but no way was he saying thatout loud in the bullpen.

 

“Okay. So…pizza at my place? I think there’s curling on cable.”

 

“Perfect.”

 

Yeah, Ray thought so, too. Because if things got uncomfortable between them again, at least there’d be a distraction for Fraser’s laser-beam mind while Ray tried to get things back to normal.

 

So they agreed on seven-thirty, to give Fraser time for his errands and Ray time to put in a token appearance at the cop bar with the Vice crew, and that was do-able. Fraser apparently wasn’t avoiding him, so Ray was good.

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

When Fraser showed up at Ray’s door in his jeans and his untied hiking boots and his ratty sweater (he’d lost the rattiest one on the Henry Allen, but the fact was, all of Fraser’s sweaters were ratty), he had his big hat in his hands and Dief panting happily next to him, and things were obviously okay again, they were good. And they might even stay that way if Ray could keep his big mouth shut.

 

Ray ruffled the Diefster’s furry coat and frisbee’d Fraser’s hat onto the bar, and the world settled back into its usual version of what passed for normal. Ray opened a beer, and Fraser even accepted a root beer in honor of the successful bust.

 

They crashed on the couch with pizza and put curling on the tube. Dief crashed on the rug. He also got pizza, but not one with pineapple, because that gave him indigestion.

 

After two rounds—okay, “ends,” Fraser called them “ends”—Ray pulled his notes from his talk with Martha George and started trying to figure out how the hell he was going to pull off the close-to-impossible. Because despite what Fraser seemed to think when he pushed Ray out of a plane, Ray was not Superman.

 

Eventually, the curling got too boring even for Fraser, and he kicked back on the couch and asked what the paperwork was.

 

So Ray told him about calling Martha. “The upshot is, I’m going to have to move. My apartment isn’t going to cut it. Need a second bedroom, for one thing, which is kind of obvious. B, I got to find a better neighborhood that is still near enough to the 2-7, with good schools, and the schools got to have good special ed, because he’s probably going to need it.”

 

“C, child care when I got to be at work and he’s not in school. That’s a big one.” He sighed. “Might be kind of expensive, but Martha says there’s a decent tax break for taking in a special-needs kid, so that might offset some of it.”

 

“I’d be happy to look into that for you, Ray.” Which Ray knew he would; Fraser did boring research-type stuff like he did breathing.

 

“Thanks. Four, gotta identify another responsible adult in case something happens to me, blah, blah…here.”

 

He handed over his notes.

 

Fraser read them over, looking serious and thoughtful. “This is very thorough, Ray. Good work.”

 

“It’s a big list,” Ray said. “Getting _me_ to think I can do it is no mean feat, Fraser. Getting _them_ to think I can do it looks like a task of whatsisname, the guy who moved the river to clean out the stables.”

 

“Herakles,” Fraser said absently.

 

“You mean Hercules?”

 

“Well, that was the Roman version of the demigod, but he’s not a true equivalent.”

 

“I don’t want to hear the lecture, do I?”

 

“No, probably not.”

 

Ray smiled. “Save it for Jackson. Sounds like a story you could tell him.”

 

Fraser looked up, like he was surprised. “Why, thank you, Ray. I’d be happy to.”

 

“Hey, don’t thank me. He’s not mine yet. If he’s ever gonna be.”

 

“I don’t think it’s a task of Herakles, Ray.”

 

“What?”

 

“Proving you’d be a good father. And I’ll be happy to state as much to the court. Put me down as a character reference.”

 

Ray grinned. “Character reference from a Canadian; it’ll be a shoe-in.”

 

“Ray…” But Fraser’s eyes showed laughter. “I have every confidence in you, Ray.”

 

That choked Ray up a little, and whoa, he wasn’t supposed to go there, was he? Tonight was supposed to be about getting back to normal, not getting emotional all over again. Ray shook his neck out. “So what was your errand? Please tell me this Gillis guy does not make you pick up his dry cleaning.”

 

“Oh, no, certainly not,” Fraser said. And then he touched his neck right where his too-tight starched collar would be, if he’d had his uniform on.

 

Oh, crap. It looked like normal wasn’t on the agenda tonight, after all. Ray wanted to kick himself, because he’d thought it was going well with the pizza and the curling and Dief here doing his usual Diefy things, like scratching behind his ear with his back foot and sniffing around the empty pizza box looking for thirds.

 

“I’m, uh. Sorry.” Christ, Ray was a broken record. He couldn’t seem to stop apologizing to Fraser. Actually, the bigger problem was, he couldn’t stop doing stuff he needed to apologize for.

 

“I was doing some…checking,” Fraser said. “Into…finances and so forth.” He heaved a sigh. “I, er, I have a proposal for you.”

 

 

When Ray heard what Fraser had in mind, he shot up off the sofa so fast his head spun. He banged his head a couple of times to clear the stars. “Did I hear you right, Fraser, or have I just gone completely off the El without noticing it?”

 

“Well, I thought you heard me. I’ve given it a lot of thought. I realized you would have to find a new domicile in order to qualify as a foster parent and then an adoptive parent, and I also realized, as you yourself have pointed out, that you and Jackson would fare best if you had another adult caregiver in the household. So I’m saying I’d like to be that person. If…if it were all right with you.”

 

“You are talking about living with me, that’s what you’re talking about. You are talking about living together. Shacking up. Am I right? Did I understand you right?”

 

“Well, er, yes, you did.”

 

“Okay. Good. So we’re on the same page, here.”

 

“We are paginated alike, Ray.”

 

Ray looked at him.

 

“You needn’t worry that I don’t understand what living together would entail,” Fraser said, real calmly. “I would certainly pay half the rent, do at least half the chores, perhaps more than half, considering that Diefenbaker can’t really…well, he can’t really do any typical household chores at all, even if he were not inclined to sloth, because he doesn’t have opposable thumbs. But I’m sure he’d help with any necessary rodent control and clean up any spilled food.”

 

Ray gave Fraser the fisheye. He gave him a fisheye that Charlie the Tuna would have envied, it was so fishy. “Fraser, I ain’t talking about rent and chores.”

 

“You’re not?”

 

“I’m talking about what it is going to look like to other people, two guys moving in together, with a dog and a _kid,_ Fraser. Raising a kid together. That isn’t going to look like buddies. I don’t know if that is what buddies look like up in Iglooville, but down here in Chicago it looks queer.”

 

“There’s nothing odd about two unrelated adults raising an adopted child, Ray. It does happen all the time in Chicago. And it probably should happen more often. There are children at risk everywhere who need good homes.”

 

Ray rolled his eyes. “As a police officer, I actually know that, Fraser. They actually send statistics about that stuff across my desk every once in a while. But you are ignoring the point I am making. I know you ain’t stupid or naïve. I am _not _playing along with the dumb-Canuck-from-Frozen-Mukluk act right now, you got me?”

 

Fraser sighed. “Understood.”

 

“Good. Now, what I’m saying is, there is nothing that is gonna look even remotely straight or platonic or I-love-you-like-a-brother about you and me shacking up, even if it’s for the most noble, selfless reason on God’s cement-covered Earth.”

 

“It’s all right. I understand that, Ray.”

 

“All right?” Ray’d better check Fraser’s root beer for the presence of controlled substances, because that did not make sense. They were _cops,_ for Chrissakes. “Why should it be all right? You know what kind of shit we’re going to get put through if we do this? People shunning us, refusing to work with us. The gestures behind our back, the comments under the breath, the dirty looks. Why would anybody go asking for that kind of trouble when they don’t _have_ to? And youdo not have to, Fraser.”

 

“It would be eminently worthwhile, for Jackson’s sake, if for no other reason. Also…well, that’s not important right now. What is important is Jackson.” Fraser fell silent, looked at TV, looked at the Hawaii mural behind the TV, looked anywhere but at Ray.

 

“That’s another thing. What about him? The shit that Jackson would have to listen to in school—”

 

“Worse than he’d have suffered as the fatherless son of a prostitute and crack addict?” Fraser said quietly, turning back to him.

 

That stopped Ray for a minute, but he got his feet under him, so to speak, and countered: “Hell, even in this neighborhood, half the kids got no father, and everybody knows somebody addicted to something.”

 

“She was his mother, Ray. She was a prostitute. The identity of his father is unknown. The other children would have mentioned it, don’t you think?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“If they say anything to him in school about having two fathers, at least he can come home to a stable household where his two fathers love him and take good care of him.”

 

“You think you could love him, Frase? You think you could take in a strange kid and love him?”

 

“Isn’t that what you’re planning to do?”

 

“Aw, I already love him.”

 

“Diefenbaker was an orphan when I took him in.”

 

Dief whuffled agreement from his place on the rug.

 

“I hear you, but Dief is a friend, not a son.”

 

“Well, that’s true. Still, my answer is yes, I think that with you, I could raise a child.”

 

“Only _with_ me? Not without me?”

 

“I don’t think that on my own I’d have the skills necessary to be a good parent,” Fraser said. “The fact is, I didn’t experience what I would think of as good parenting; at least, not from my own caregivers. But I think I could learn from you.”

 

“Me? What makes you think I’d be any good at it?” Which really meant they were back to square one of Ray’s argument, which was that he would probably suck as a parent.

 

“Your deep desire to do it, among other things.”

 

“Other things?”

 

“You love very intensely, Ray. And with great loyalty. I think that’s the ingredient needed most.”

 

“And you don’t think you can…love like that?” Ray asked, feeling himself tense up. Because this wasn’t only about Jackson any more.

 

“Oh, you have no idea, Ray.”

 

His words sent a long shiver up Ray’s spine. He tried, he really tried to keep from imagining those words in his ear, Fraser’s gorgeous voice right _there_, so close to him that he heard it inside his head, Fraser’s breath soft on Ray’s skin as he told Ray just how deeply he could…_love._ Fuck, why did Fraser’s voice always _do _this to him? At least he’d put on his tightest jeans tonight so there’d be less chance of Ray giving an encore of last night’s sorry performance.

 

“The question is whether my…intense attachments are beneficial to the ones I love, or detrimental. In the case of a child, though, I think I could strike an appropriate balance. It only seems to be…well, romantic entanglements that ignite my…” He stopped. Scratched at his eyebrow. Didn’t meet Ray’s eyes.

 

Didn’t say the next word, though Ray somehow heard it anyway: _passion_. It made him weak in the knees, to think of Fraser and passion in the same breath.

 

Ray dropped back down onto the sofa, a little too heavily. Probably jostled Fraser, because Fraser was right on cue, steadying Ray with a hand on his shoulder.

 

Ray was tired. He was so fucking tired. He draped his arm over his face. “Fraser. It ain’t that I don’t think you can do it. I know you can.”

 

“You do?”

 

“Sure. Just like you know about me. You’d be a good dad, Fraser. You know what mistakes your dad made, and you’re not going to repeat them.”

 

“So you’ll consider my proposal?”

 

“Oh, Jeez. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying, you’ll make a good dad when you have your own children. If you want to do it, you won’t have any shortage of options. Half the eligible women in the greater Chicago area would line up for the chance.”

 

“Those aren’t options I’d consider, Ray.”

 

“Well, why the hell not?” Ray hated his voice when it got all raspy like that, but he couldn’t seem to stop the flood of words coming out of him. “Because you _could,_ you are _normal_, you are not like me, and you could, and lots of women would do it, they wouldn’t steer around you like they steer around me with my big, invisible, neon ‘I Am Queer’ sign stamped on my forehead.” He decided not to mention the other sign, the one that said “I Am Obsessed with My Partner.”

 

“Ray, I’d have…such a relationship wouldn’t…I…just can’t.”

 

Right. Because Fraser didn’t_ do_ relationships. That was the whole crux of the point of the thing, right there. Which you’d think Ray would’ve twigged to that after the post-inappropriate-erection conversation last night.

 

“Yeah, I’m sorry.” There was that goddamned word again. He let his arm slide off his face, pulled himself more upright.

 

“Will you consider it?” Fraser said, his voice only a little louder than a whisper.

 

Ray looked at him. Fraser’s intense blue gaze was riveted on him. Like Fraser was really damn serious about this. Like he _wanted_ it.

 

“Frase.” Ray closed his eyes, in pain.

 

“I see,” Fraser said, his voice dropping down on the end like he was shutting a door between them.

 

Ray opened his eyes. Fraser’s expression did look suddenly…closed. Ray couldn’t handle that. He grabbed hold of Fraser’s arm before he even realized he’d done it.

 

“Frase, you don’t understand.”

 

“Since you’re not saying yes, I think I do understand,” Fraser said, real evenly.

 

“Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the offer.”

 

Fraser just looked at him.

 

“It’s not that I wouldn’t take you up on it in a red minute if…I was…if I was normal, Fraser. If I was the partner and friend I’m supposed to be instead of a fucking…”

 

“Don’t say it, Ray.”

 

“Fag,” Ray said, and he couldn’t help it, his eyes got all wet.

 

“Don’t say that.”

 

“I’m sor—”

 

“Don’t say that, either,” Fraser said. His hand was back on Ray’s shoulder. It was on Ray’s neck, just like the night in the car, in the driveway of Beth Botrelle’s house, Fraser’s hand on Ray’s neck while Ray totally fucking _lost it _and cried all over the vintage upholstery.

 

Unlike that night, they weren’t in a public place, and Fraser inched over on the sofa and pulled Ray right into his arms.

 

So Ray lost it and cried all over Fraser’s ratty sweater.

 

 

Eventually, Fraser let go of him and Ray stumbled into the bathroom and threw a lot of cold water in his face. It didn’t stop his face from being all splotchy, but it felt a little better.

 

When he came back out, Fraser was in the kitchen throwing away pizza boxes and putting leftovers in the fridge, and Ray couldn’t help thinking what a cool thing it would be to have a roommate who actually liked doing housework almost as much as he liked watching it on ice. Ray could almost go for that if he could forget about the fact that he had a serious thing for the guy and he’d probably get pneumonia from all the cold showers he’d have to take.

 

Fraser glanced up at him, casually glanced away, like there was nothing strange or, God forbid, _queer _going on here, then turned back around and started fucking scrubbing out Ray’s kitchen sink. The freak.

 

Ray slid into a barstool and laid his head on the counter. If Fraser wanted to make like the fucking Miracle Maids, let him. Maybe he should have Fraser over even more often. Then when Ray got unexpected visits from Social Services, the place would be all shiny and clean and look like it was inhabited by a Canadian. They’d love that.

 

There was a gentle touch on his hair. He looked up. Who else? The straight guy with absolutely no straight-guy boundaries—except for the big one, the one where actual _sex_ was out of the question. Ray’s day was complete. He sighed and put his head back down.

 

Fraser came around the partition and sat down next to him. His hand came down to rest on Ray’s back between his shoulder blades. He pressed there, and, yeah, found that big knot of tension that was aching, right at the place where his shoulder holster kind of pulled. Fraser kneaded the tight spot with his fingertips, soothing it.

 

Why the hell was Fraser always _touching _him? Ray wondered. It wasn’t like Fraser didn’t _notice _what his touches did to Ray, even before he got an eyeful last night.Fraser could detect a microbe on the bottom of a piece of gross chewing gum stuck to the sidewalk. How could a guy that sharp have failed to connect the dots to get the picture: he touches Ray, he talks in Ray’s ear with that _voice,_ Ray gets hard enough to pound diamonds into dust.

 

Except right now, Ray had kind of _had_ it, so his dick wasn’t giving him any trouble at the moment. So he just leaned on the bar and let Fraser work on his back, and he didn’t say anything.

 

Fraser must’ve felt the big knot in Ray’s back loosen up, because when it finally did, he rubbed the flat of his hand over Ray’s whole back a couple of times, and then stopped and moved his hands away.

 

“Thanks, Frase,” Ray murmured.

 

“Any time.” Fraser cleared his throat softly. “I, ah, I just wanted to tell you my offer stands. I’d like to ask you to think about it. It might make the whole process much easier, and I’d be open to…well, to doing it in any way that would be comfortable for you. And Jackson, of course.”

 

Ray lifted his head. Pushed himself up on his hands, put his head back down on his crossed arms, facing Fraser. “You gonna stay here in Chicago, Fraser? Because what you’re talking about would kind of depend on that.”

 

“Is that what this is about?” Fraser said. “You think I’d leave you?”

 

_Leave you._ Like they were lovers or something. Like they had some kind of _thing,_ like a commitment or something.

 

Fraser really was from another planet.

 

“You could get recalled any time, right?” Ray asked. “They decide they want you to, I don’t know, do security detail for the queen in Ottawa, and—poof! you’re out of here.”

 

“No, Ray. Such an honor would be a very temporary job, and I doubt they’d accord it to me, in any case. But there was one thing they did grant me after the Muldoon capture, and that was my choice of posting, for as long as I wish it. This posting was my choice.”

 

Ray sat all the way up, easing back in the chair. He knew Fraser’d asked to come back to Chicago. He’d been happier to hear that news than he had been to hit the walk-off grand slam that time with the Hawkeyes. But he hadn’t realized Fraser’d chosen Chicago—chosen Ray—over all other options, options in Freezerland, options in _Canada__, _for God’s sake. “Oh,” was all he could say, stupidly.

 

Fraser was nodding at him, seeing him get it, smiling a little. He didn’t need to say “I chose you over all of Canada, Ray.” It was written all over his face.

 

“It’d be a little more…you know, secure if you got a green card, Fraser. Hell, in your case it could be pretty easy. I’ll bet you the superintendent and the mayor would even write personal letters of recommendation.”

 

“All right. I’d be willing to apply.”

 

“You would, huh?”

 

“I’m quite serious about this, Ray.”

 

“Fraser. You know what people will think.”

 

“I don’t care what people will think.”

 

Ray stared at him a long moment. “Yeah. Yeah, I get that.”

 

“Caring what people think has never worked for me, Ray. It has never prevented loss, ostracism, shunning. Exile.”

 

Ray got that, too.

 

Fraser shifted in his seat. “So you will think about it?”

 

Ray blew out a breath. It didn’t really help much with the lump in his throat. “Yeah. I’m thinking about it, Fraser, I’m…it’s just…”

 

“Tell me, Ray.” That voice was like the smoothest single-malt. Ray had no goddamned defense against that voice.

 

“Frase. Okay, look, you’re right it’s a good solution, it—it might work, it might really work, and I don’t want you to think I’m chickenshit, you know, about what people will say, like I care so much. I mean, not about me. I’ve had to keep a low profile about that stuff because of being a cop, because it could make it real hard to do my job if word got around.”

 

“I know you’re not a coward, Ray. You’re the bravest man I know.”

 

Which was, wow, that was something. “It’s just…don’t you see? I always knew that at some point I might have to put up with the homophobic crap; I just don’t like thinking that you might have to put up with it, too.”

 

“That’s very considerate of you, Ray. But I’m willing to.”

 

“I, uh, that’s amazing, Fraser. You’re amazing. Most guys would not be willing.”

 

“As I’ve said before, I’m not most guys.”

 

“Yeah, I really get that.”

 

“Is there anything else?”

 

“Just…just the one thing,” Ray said. He gestured at himself. “My, uh. Inappropriate reactions. If I gotta live with you…” He rubbed his hand through his hair, probably sending the spikes in all directions.

 

Fraser waved a hand. “Oh. Well…that doesn’t bother me. We did very well up North, staying in a pup tent; I’m sure we’d be fine in a much larger space, especially with Jackson to care for.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. It’s just…” Ray sighed and laid his head back down on his arms, on top of the bar, turning his head so he could still see Fraser. “It ain’t you I’m worried about, Fraser. It’s me. See…I could do this. I could do this for Jackson. I could even do this for you, if you wanted to be roommates and Jackson wasn’t in the picture.

 

“I could put up with the innuendo and the outright slurs and the backstabbing we’re probably going to get if we do this. I just thought…” And—goddamn it to fucking _hell—_Fraser’s hand was on Ray’s back again, damn it.

 

“I thought if you ever…if we ever…” his voice was so raspy now that it was like sandpaper.

 

“But we didn’t. You didn’t and I didn’t, you’re not like that…so, we’re buddies, and I just didn’t think I’d have to take the crap from people without also getting, you know, the good parts.”

 

Fraser’s eyebrows went up. “Jackson’s not a good part?”

 

“Sure, he is, Frase. That’s not what I meant.” He sighed real hard. “I meant you and me. I—I thought if we had something together. If we had a thing…then it’d be worth what people are gonna say and do. Just like you said about Jackson being able to deal with the other kids’ comments because he’d know he was coming home to two guys who loved him.

 

“But doing this just to help me with Jackson, it’s—Frase, you don’t have to, don’t you see? You could stay in your own place and still help a lot.”

 

“Like a…like an uncle, Ray? It wouldn’t be the same as being a parent.”

 

“Close enough, without drawing all the gossip and stuff down on you. Me, they’re gonna figure me out sooner or later, but you can still be normal.”

 

“I’ll never be that.”

 

“You could.”

 

“Never. I’m a freak; you tell me that on average twice a week.”

 

“Well, it takes one to know one. I’m a freak, too, just not the same kind.”

 

“Couldn’t we be freaks together?”

 

“We’re already freaks together, Fraser, just not _together_ together, if you catch my drift.”

 

“What I ‘catch,’ Ray, is that you’re saying you don’t want me here.”

 

Ray was off his barstool in a heartbeat. “No! I’m saying you could avoid the rumors and the innuendo and your partner getting stiff in his pants all the time and you not being able to get away from it, away from _me—” _Ray was practically shouting at him, and that was fucking great, the landlady downstairs probably didn’t get enough entertainment from Ray’s dancing feet.

 

“I’ve said I don’t mind,” Fraser said real quietly, like he was trying to calm a frightened animal. Which Ray guessed wasn’t far from the truth. “Why do you? We’re already partners. We already see each other every day. Look forward to seeing each other. It’s Friday night, Ray, and I’m here. Where I always am on Friday night, unless we, you and I, are out somewhere else, together.”

 

Holy shit. That took the wind out of Ray’s sails. He sank back onto the barstool, stunned. “Date night,” he said. “Fuck. We’re dating, aren’t we?”

 

“Apparently.” Fraser looked at the floor, at his sock feet. Ray looked there, too. At Fraser’s gray-tweed-colored socks. At the yellow seams on those socks. He _knew_ those socks, he’d recognize Fraser’s socks anywhere.

 

You had to spend a lot of time with a guy before you recognized every goddamned pair of his socks.

 

He looked back up at Fraser. Fraser looked at him.

 

“And you’re talking about moving in together. Now that our, uh, relationship is...at this juncture.” He gestured, trying to find a way to put it that didn’t sound _totally fucking insane._

 

“That’s right.”

 

“For Jackson’s sake.”

 

“For all of us. I’m talking about…about family, Ray. About being a family.”

 

“You are Loony Tunes, buddy.” Ray leaned back in his chair, almost far enough to risk tipping over. Though he didn’t think actually tipping over and falling would make much of a difference in how he felt, give or take a bruise here and there.

 

“You think I’m unhinged to suggest this?”

 

Ray sighed. Scrubbed his hand over his face a few times. “Nah, I guess not,” he admitted. “I guess from your perspective, it’s not crazy at all. Makes a lot of sense. You get the partner and friend, the kid, the dog—ready-made family, at least for a guy who don’t want a wife. Plus a better apartment that’s maybe even cheaper. And you don’t care about the sticks and stones. I got to admit I don’t see a downside from your perspective.”

 

“And from yours?”

 

“All good, buddy. Except for that thing where I need the person I’m dating and—Jesus—_living with _to…to…”

 

“Yes?”

 

“To love me.” It was out. He’d said it. He looked at the floor again. It looked kind of blurry, not the kind of blurry it usually looked without his glasses. He scrubbed his knuckles over his eyes, real quick.

 

“I do love you, Ray.”

 

Okay, that made him spill. Fuck. Ray wiped the wetness away with his hand. It wasn’t like he had any macho cred left with Fraser anyway, right? He’d bawled like a kid in front of him twice, he was queer for him and Fraser knew it in living color, and the one time he’d clocked Fraser good, he’d made Fraser hit him back (a hell of a lot harder) and he still felt so guilty he ended up almost drowning to make up for it.

 

“Of course I love you. I wouldn’t be offering this…commitment to you if I didn’t.” Whoa, Fraser’s voice was getting a bit wobbly there, too.

 

“We can’t do this. Not now. I can’t.” He wiped another tear. Fuck, couldn’t he even get his damn tear ducts under control? What was wrong with him?

 

Fraser’s hand touched his arm, gently. “I hope to get you to reconsider, but…perhaps now’s not the time.”

 

Ray nodded acknowledgment without looking up.

 

“Perhaps Dief and I should be going.”

 

“All right.”

 

But as Fraser got up and started collecting his stuff, Ray suddenly realized he didn’t want to let Fraser walk out of the apartment in this painful silence. It wouldn’t be buddies, and since Ray had apparently shot any hope of anything else with Fraser all to hell, he _needed_ to be buddies.

 

“Frase, I’m…I’m gonna go see Jackson tomorrow. We’re supposed to have good weather. I thought maybe we could take him to the park, you know? And I promised him a jump rope. I gotta find one first. A little one, but a quality one, you know?” Fraser looked up. He already had his hat on, so his face was in shadow, hard to see. “Dief!” he said.

 

“Pick you up at ten?” God, Ray sounded so pathetic.

 

Fraser just straightened his hat. “All right.”

 

“How about we bring Dief? Jackson’ll get a kick out of him.”

 

“I think Dief would like that.” Fraser sounded kind of…strained.

 

So apparently it was finally Ray’s turn to ask if his partner was all right.

 

“I’m fine, Ray. Just…” he glanced away.

 

“Right. Feelings.” He stopped himself from saying “I’m sorry,” even though he was, he was goddamned sorry things weren’t right for either of them.

 

“Dief,” Fraser said again, his voice cracking.

 

Dief made a sleepy whine from his crashing place on the rug.

 

“He can stay,” Ray offered.

 

“He’ll at least have to go out,” Fraser said.

 

Ray shrugged. “So I’ll take him out.”

 

“All right,” Fraser said.

 

“Unless you need him,” Ray said. “You need him?”

 

Fraser smiled a little. “No, Ray. It pleases me to think of my two dear friends staying together.”

 

“Okay,” Ray said, hanging onto control of his voice by a thread. He wanted to touch Fraser’s hand, he wanted…something.

 

He wanted everything.

 

He couldn’t have it. Right.

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Fraser said, real quiet, and went out.

 

Ray stumbled forward to lock the door after him, and if he held onto it for a few minutes and spilled over some more, Dief either didn’t notice or at least wasn’t telling.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

The next morning, Ray was still about fifteen minutes from having to leave to pick up Fraser when he heard a knock on the door, jumped, and cut himself shaving. He was just about finished, but the tiny amount of shaving cream still left on his face stung the cut, anyway. He rinsed his face quickly before putting the razor down, grabbed a towel to throw around his waist, and padded over to the door in his bare feet.

 

Dief was already at the door, whuffling and scratching at it.

 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. Who is it, you know them?”

 

Dief panted happily.

 

“You know them, okay. Hang on.” He leaned over the wolf to see through the peephole: Fraser. Huh.

 

He shooed Dief back and let Fraser in, managing even though his hands were still kind of slippery.

 

“Hello, there, Ray,” Fraser said. “I’m sorry to interrupt your morning ablutions, but I thought better of having you drive north to pick me up when we’re going south to see Jackson…”

 

“Uh-huh.” Ray just waited till Fraser chugged to a standstill. He shut the door behind him.

 

Fraser looked at him. “Oh, dear.” He blushed.

 

Jeez. Ray’d had enough of this pussyfooting around each other. It was _stupid, _that’s what it was. They’d lived in each other’s insulated _pockets_ up in the Frostbite Zone.

 

Ray was pretty well cried out from last night, and he felt better, he felt _lighter._ Time to help his partner lighten up and get real, too. They were either best friends or they were more than that, and either way, Ray was not going to start freaking out about Fraser seeing him in whatever he had on or didn’t have on.

 

He smirked at him. “Fraser, you want to _live _with me.”

 

“Well, yes, I do.”

 

“Okay. Just pointing that out. See, because if you lived with me, you would have to get used to seeing a lot worse than me in a towel.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Because in my own house? When nobody’s knocking on my door, and I am shaving and what-not, getting ready? I don’t bother with the towel.”

 

“I see.”

 

“You will.”

 

“Oh! Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”

 

“Nope. That means you will right now.” Ray pulled the towel off and used it to dry his hair.

 

He figured Fraser was blushing like a stop sign, but he didn’t bother checking. He just turned and went into the bedroom to find his clothes.

 

When he came out again, dressed and ready, he found Fraser in the kitchen, washing out his coffee cup.

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

It took them fucking forever to find a good jump rope; most of the kid-sized ones available these days were crap. But the third sports store they checked, a little hole in the wall on West 18th, had the right one; it was made of smooth-braided nylon rope and it turned precisely in the handles.

 

Ray slid into the car and tossed the bag onto the back seat, away from Dief. “Maybe for Christmas I can find him little bitty boxing gloves. That’ll be cute.”

 

“It may take some doing,” Fraser said, putting his seatbelt on like a good Mountie. “I’m not sure how big a market there is for boxing equipment for four-year-olds.”

 

“Well, I’ll figure something out,” Ray said. “Maybe just tape his hands or something, so he gets used to the feel and doesn’t risk hurting his fingers. With a kid this young, you just want to go over the real basics, how to stand, how to move, mostly just get ’em to have fun and wait till they’re older for anything serious.”

 

“That sounds like a very sensible plan,” Fraser said. “You’ve been reading up on preschool physical fitness?”

 

“No, not yet; I haven’t had any time this week. But I will; I’ll get to that. Nah, I was just remembering being a kid myself, how, uh, how my dad showed me, at that age.”

 

Fraser looked over at him with that _look_ on his face. That sort of glowing look. Weird, Ray thought. It was like something did not add up. He thought about it while he started the car and got them going towards Jackson’s. Here was this guy

 

—this gorgeous guy, by the way: People’s Exhibit A, can we just note that? _Gorgeous._

 

—who Ray was apparently _dating: _Exhibit 2, folks, the dating thing had been mentioned and agreed upon

 

—and who, in fact, wanted to _move in_ with Ray: Exhibit 3

 

—because he _loved_ Ray: Exhibit D

 

—and who looked at Ray like _that_: Exhibit E, especially when Ray talked about family-type stuff or did family-type stuff or did stuff that came under the heading of wanting to take care of Jackson or letting Dief stay overnight

 

And he did not want to be Ray’s boyfriend, not in the usual sense.

 

 

If Ray was running an investigation on a guy, and he had a bunch of evidence like that in his notebook, he would never buy it in a million years. He’d be looking for where the body or the loot was buried, because, Your Honor, there was no way the suspect was telling the truth.

 

Ray did not even have to bother sending the state’s attorney all of the evidence of the defendant’s priors, the touching and holding and the “I love you” statements and stuff, because even the evidence of the past twenty-four hours was enough to convict.

 

Counsel for the defense would then point out the Canadian-Mountiness of the suspect, and how the suspect _always_ told the truth, even if said truth might lead to him getting shot or his American partner getting shot.

 

And that, there, that was a tough argument for the prosecution to counter, because it was right. He did always tell the truth, and he risked his life to do it, which went to show how much of a freak he was.

 

And he _said_ he did not want to be Ray’s boyfriend, not in the usual sense. He apparently wanted to be Ray’s _platonic_ boyfriend, which, Your Honor, is prima-whatsits, on the face of it, really fucking nuts.

 

Because Fraser could have his delusions of platonic boyfriendhood from the comfortable and _safe_ distance of his apartment, fifty-eight blocks away from Ray’s, and still have everything else he wanted, including afternoons in the park with Jackson and dangerous lesioning with Ray during working hours, and every other fucking thing he wanted…without the _fucking_  that he said he didn’t want, goddamn it. Without the fucking, and without anybody _thinking_ there was any fucking, which was totally _germane_, because that, there, was a _big_ bonus to not being fucking _gay,_  ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

 

What kind of not-gay cop, even a Canadian one—even one that was swinging by only half his hinges because of having been brought up in a traveling library inside of a giant ice cube—what red-blooded Canadian guy did not _take_ that not-gay bonus when it was available?

 

It strains the credulosity, don’t it, ladies and gentlemen?

 

Ray thought about it all the way down to Jackson’s place.

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

When they got to the house, Lila Douglas, the foster mom, was already outside with Jackson. She was younger than Martha George, medium height and slim, not emaciated, just pleasantly slim, like Dani would have been if she’d been eating normally instead of living on cocaineand cigarettes.

 

Mrs. Douglas was wearing a navy blue coat almost the same style as the one Ray’d bought for Dani, and for a moment Ray had kind of a vision: ten years younger and _this_ could have been Dani, a person who was helping and making a difference to kids instead of working the streets in pain all the time, starving herself down to nothing, and shoving Jackson off on stoned roommates while she earned enough for another fix.

 

Jackson could have grown up in a neighborhood like this, with a mom, and, hey, maybe even a dad….

 

Ray smacked his head. Who was he, Walter Mitty, having stupid daydreams? Dani had been orphaned herself at age ten; that was what’d happened to her, and you couldn’t turn the clock back. Probably that wasn’t even anyone’s fault, while you couldn’t say the same thing about Sergeant Robert Fraser letting his librarian parents from another century raise his son while he missed Christmases and birthdays and just about every day, showing every sign of not wanting the kid.

 

Ray glanced over at Fraser, but Fraser had turned his shining eyes on Jackson, on the sight of Jackson waving and pointing and trying to run to the car even though Mrs. Douglas had a good strong grip on his wrist.

 

Man, they lived in the city; Ray was going to have to teach Jackson to quit the running after cars. It wasn’t any better for little boys than it was for dogs.

 

The thought chilled him, but then he remembered Jackson had spent almost all of his four-and-a-half years in the city without Ray there to keep him out of traffic, and he obviously had done okay. Obviously, he just needed a place to run around, and that was easy, that was a no-brainer. Chicago was full of beautiful parks with plenty of room for running and playing, and, heck, Ray needed to get out and stretch his damn legs once in a while, too. They’d go every week. Maybe every day.

 

He and Fraser got out of the car, and he snagged the bag off the back seat.

 

Mrs. Douglas let go Jackson’s arm, and the kid pelted forward and ended up practically knocking the breath out of Ray, he hugged him so hard. “R-eh! R-eh!”

 

“Hey! How are you, champ?” Ray hugged him back.

 

“Guh, guh.”

 

“You’re good, huh? Me, too, I’m good. Hey, look, I brought Fraser.”

 

“F-eh,” Jackson said, pointing up. “Ha-eh. Hat!”

 

Ray looked. Fraser had his hat on. Which he totally would have removed in the presence of a lady unless he was pretending he forgot—the stupid, dorky smirk that was edging onto his face made that completely clear.

 

“Oh, dear,” Fraser said, totally faking it, with a silly face to prove it. “Normally, I would remove my hat in a lady’s presence, yes, but I seem to recall that last time you absconded with it.”

 

“Ab-whatsis?”

 

“Absconded. He snatched it.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Ray squatted all the way down to Jackson’s level. “The hat thing was really fun, wasn’t it?”

 

“Heh,” Jackson said, with a crafty grin.

 

“Yeah, but here’s the thing, buddy. It took Fraser two days and a lot of weird Inuit potions to get the grass stains out of it after we all played Keep Away with it. So we can’t do that no more, because the hat is, like, special. You get me?”

 

Jackson’s face had gone serious. He nodded.

 

Ray smiled. “Good. So let’s just let Fraser do the polite thing and take off the hat for Miss Lila, and meanwhile, I got someone else to introduce you to. Just let me ask Miss Lila something first.”

 

So he got up and asked her if she’d be okay with them letting Dief out of the car, told her Dief was good with kids and a trained police dog and sled dog and whatnot. She said it was okay; Jackson was fine with the neighbor’s dog, so why not?

 

So Ray grasped Dief him by the muzzle and mouthed silently at him, “This is my man Jackson. He’s real little, and he just lost his mom, and I want you to be real nice to him.”

 

Dief gave Ray a bored look, which Ray read to mean that Dief was always nice to kids, at least any kids who weren’t perps, and in the case of four-year-olds, that was a given.

 

So Ray let him out and he went over to Jackson nice and slow, but not too slow, not like he was wary, just friendly, so they could check each other out. The checking-out only lasted seconds, and then Jackson had his little arms around Dief’s neck, hugging him.

 

Ray looked up at Fraser. And Fraser’s eyes were shining again.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

Jackson’s eyes lit up when he saw the jump rope. Ray tried to show him how to skip it, but that was a total failure, and pretty funny, too, because Ray’s legs were longer than Jackson’s whole body, just about, and the rope was Jackson’s size. Ray was down for the count more than once.

 

So everybody had a good laugh at Ray’s expense—Ray, too, he couldn’t get the least bit yanked about his bruised hip or _anything,_  because Jackson was laughing, he was laughing full out like he was happy, and that did things to Ray, it made him feel like he was going to just explode inside, and when he looked up at Fraser and saw _that look_ on his face yet again, he was sure, this time, that he was giving it right back.

 

When he got his wind back, Ray went back to the car and dug around in the trunk and found his own jump rope, and then he showed Jackson the right way to do it.

 

But apparently jumping rope like a boxer was still the _wrong _way, at least to a girl, because Miss Lila stood there laughing and said she never understood why men turned something that was supposed to be fun into a way to practically kill themselves, and pointed out how men just didn’t have the rhythm.

 

So Ray dropped the rope and asked her if he could have this dance. She looked startled, but she said okay. So, right there on the driveway, he hummed the music and took her through eight bars each of a waltz, a rhumba, and a foxtrot, till she practically collapsed laughing and admitted that, okay, _Ray_ had plenty of rhythm.

 

And when he turned back to see what the other guys were doing, he saw that Fraser had set his hat on the car and was jumping rope with Jackson. Fraser was using Ray’s jump rope and Jackson was using his, and Jackson was jumping rope almost perfectly, like he already knew how.

 

Ray let out a low whistle. “Will you look at that?”

 

“Wow,” Lila said. “He couldn’t do anything like that before.”

 

“I know,” Ray said. “I used to have him try at the gym, but he really couldn’t. I chalked it up to that he was only three, and the ropes were all too long, anyway. I mean, I shortened them up, but…”

 

“He’s really very coordinated,” she said. “It wasn’t that. I suspect…well, there’s no way to know, really, but I suspect his mama didn’t let him be very active. I don’t think he was allowed out all that much. He’s outside every chance he gets. Runs me ragged.”

 

Ray shrugged. “Active kid. I was just like that. And, uh, yeah, I ran my mother ragged.” He knew his grin was kind of sheepish.

 

She smiled back at him, then sobered. “There’s something else,” she said. “He doesn’t cry out loud.”

 

“What do you mean, you mean because of his mom?” He wasn’t going to say it, not with Jackson possibly in earshot.

 

“No, I mean when he _does _cry, or complain about something, or…he doesn’t make a sound. And there’s nothing wrong with his vocal cords, as you can hear.”

 

Ray could; Jackson and Fraser were laughing and chortling and guffawing all over the place, especially when Fraser accidentally on purpose tripped on his jump rope and did a pratfall (imitating Ray’s not-on-purpose one, and Ray’d have to have a word with him later about the mocking-Ray stuff, only later).

 

“It’s like somebody used to shush him. Like he got conditioned to having to be really quiet, all the time.”

 

“Whoa,” Ray said. “You think that’s why he’s not really speaking?”

 

“I really don’t know enough about it. I’ve studied some child psychology, but I’m no expert. Still I can’t help wondering.”

 

No shit. She’d got Ray wondering, too.

 

Lila wiped her palms on her pants legs. “I guess there’s no real way to know what his past was like. He’ll probably never be able to tell us even if he does remember some of it.”

 

Ray held up a hand. “Wait a second. We don’t gotta ask him. There’s other people we can ask. She had three roommates.”

 

Lila looked surprised. “I hadn’t heard.”

 

“Well, we didn’t want it in the papers because of an ongoing investigation into…some other stuff, and lucky for us, the papers apparently didn’t think a poor black female with a crack habit deserved an inch in the obits.”

 

“She didn’t have relatives?”

 

“None that cared,” Ray said. “She was in the foster system after a whole bunch of different relatives, one after the other, turned her out.”

 

“It’s not perfect,” she said.

 

He patted her hand. He figured she’d be okay with that, since she’d let him dance with her.

 

She looked up and smiled.

 

“It don’t have to be perfect,” he said. “It just has to be enough.”

 

She nodded. “I know. We, my husband and I are, the first line of defense for some of these kids. They come through here when they’re traumatized, like Jackson, or worse. Much worse, sometimes. They don’t stay that long, just long enough to find them a good situation if we possibly can. If they still have parents or guardians living, someone works with them to see if they can possibly get their children back, whether it’s rehab or just a helping hand that they need. And if they can’t, or if there are no parents, as in Jackson’s case, then we try to find them a good situation as soon as possible.”

 

“I want to be Jackson’s good situation,” Ray said.

 

“I know. Mrs. George told me. I’m happy for you. And very happy for him. Good luck, Ray.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“You’re great with him, clearly a good influence. He’s never so happy as when you’re going to visit, and he talks. You know he talks about it now? In single syllables, mostly, but he’s tried for more syllables once in a while, and I think he’s getting there.”

 

“Oh, yeah, he can. He said a whole sentence the day I read the books to him. Uh, Wednesday, the day of the funeral.”

 

“He did? Interesting. Were you able to make out any words?”

 

“Well, he said ‘mama,’ kind of. The way he does. He said ‘okay.’ I didn’t really catch the individual words, but I got the meaning. He was asking me where his mother went and when she was coming back.”

 

She nodded. “Makes sense.”

 

“Yeah, it’s what I’d be asking.”

 

“What did you tell him?”

 

“Well. I told him she loves him no matter where she is. And I told him even the grownups don’t have all the answers.”

 

“Ain’t that the truth,” she said.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

After the rope-jumping had tired everybody out, Lila had them all come inside and she made them sandwiches (Fraser helped, of course, because Fraser _always _helped), and then Ray and Fraser and Dief took Jackson and Lila to the nearest park and they went on the swings and then ran around like maniacs some more.

 

About three o’clock, Lila said she had to be getting back, because her other kids were coming back from being out with her husband, and anyway, it was probably a good time for Jackson to nap; he got cranky by dinner time if he didn’t have a nap in the afternoon.

 

So Ray reluctantly said goodbye and gave Jackson a bunch of hugs, and Dief licked Jackson’s face, and Fraser even let Jackson hug him, sort of. Ray noticed Fraser kind of tried to hug back, real carefully, like he was afraid Jackson might break.

 

Ray could see he was going to have to work with Fraser on the whole hugging thing. He was good with hugging Ray when he needed it and when they weren’t where anyone could see them, but he was pretty reserved with everybody else. If Ray was going to bring Jackson into the family—whatever they were, it probably _was_ some kind of wacked-out version of a family—he was going to have to get Fraser up to speed. If Fraser wanted to be a father, he needed to learn to hug his kid.

 

Hell, even _Ray’s_ father could hug him once in a while, and Ray’s father was certainly no ace when it came to the whole emotions deal.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

So they took off, and they were kind of quiet on the way back, until finally Ray couldn’t stand the silence any more, and he just sort of blurted, “Come back and have dinner with me?”

 

“Of course, Ray,” Fraser said, in that annoyingly casual voice of his—annoying because there was nothing natural or casual or ordinary about any of this—and he spun his hat in his hands.

 

“Of course, Ray,” Ray mimicked under his breath. Yeah, of course. Because they were boyfriends, right? Except _not._ Which, dammit, was the most fucking annoying, crazy-assed, _weird_ thing ever, and it stood to reason _Fraser_ would’ve come up with something this weird.

 

Dief whined from the back seat. Oh, great, Ray was being double-teamed. Thanks, wolf.

 

“He’s not very discreet, for a wolf,” Fraser remarked. “So if you’re going to mock me, I suggest you do it well out of his field of vision.”

 

“Hah…did you worry about everyone and the neighbors’ field of vision when you were mocking me?”

 

“I would never mock you, Ray.” Fraser sounded hurt.

 

“With the jump rope, and the…the pratfall a la Ray. You did that on purpose.”

 

“To make Jackson laugh, not to mock you. I didn’t come close to the grace of yours.”

 

“Grace? You telling me you thought I did that on purpose?”

 

“Well, didn’t you?”

 

“Jesus, Fraser. For a guy who can hear a pin drop a city block away, you can be pretty clueless. No, I did not do that on purpose. I just was stupid, trying to jump a teeny-tiny preschool rope like that.”

 

“Oh. Well you are extremely graceful, Ray, and that’s what I was noticing.”

 

How Fraser got _grace_ out of the klutziest move ever, Ray didn’t know, but, okay, Fraser’d convinced him he wasn’t yanking his chain.

 

“And I saw you dancing with Mrs. Douglas,” Fraser said, and, whoa, there was an odd note in his voice.

 

Ray was driving, so he could only glance over a couple times, but the two glances were enough to show him some interesting things: Fraser, looking down at his hat, holding it in his hands like it was fragile, which it really wasn’t. Fraser, not looking at Ray. Fraser, with a little frown pushing out his upper lip.

 

“Yeah, well, I had to defend the honor of boxers everywhere. She thinks we jump rope funny and don’t have rhythm.”

 

“Oh, I see. So you had to show her your innate rhythm. By dancing with her.”

 

And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, was Fraser’s snippy voice. Interesting, because it would have been totally out of place in the present conversation if it had been anything but what it was.

 

Jealousy.

 

Your Honor, I rest my case.

 

Ray tried to keep the grin—which was more of a smirk, anyway—off his face. “She’s a married woman, and we were dancing on the front lawn, Fraser. It was totally innocent.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“I’d have been happy to dance with you, Fraser, seeing as you’re my _boyfriend_, even though you’re my boyfriend without benefits, weird though that is. But you were busy entertaining Jackson, and the neighbors would’ve freaked.”

 

“I suppose.”

 

“You suppose, huh? Suppose you tell me what’s got your boxers in a bunch.”

 

“Ah…nothing, Ray. I apologize. I don’t feel quite myself, I guess.” He thumbed his eyebrow.

 

“It was fun, with the little guy,” Ray said, watching the road, but listening to Fraser real good at the same time.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Hard to leave. I got choked up.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Your dad never took you to a park, huh?”

 

“Well, he took me camping.”

 

“That the time he left you in the woods to make your own fire and find your own way out and all that?”

 

“Mm-hm.”

 

“Yeah, so, that don’t count. Surprise orienteering tests and scaring a kid half to death? That is not part of the whole family-camping experience, and it’s sure as hell not Saturday in the park.”

 

“Yes, I see that now.”

 

“So you’re watching Jackson get something you didn’t have.”

 

“I didn’t realize I would react.”

 

“Well, now you know. You got to maybe expect a reaction here and there. I bet you it won’t be every time. But when it happens, don’t be shocked, okay?”

 

“All right.”

 

“You think about maybe…seeing somebody? Doing therapy? I, uh…they made me go to a headshrinker a few times after that, you know, that warehouse thing when I got shot. It wasn’t so bad. Helped me deal.”

 

“It’s certainly worth considering,” Fraser said in that exact tone of voice that said Ray didn’t have a hope in hell of talking him into it.

 

Ray sighed. He felt like a tire with all the air let out. Your Honor, the verdict is ‘guilty as charged,’ however, the defendant is loony as a cuckoo bird, so he’s getting off scot-free. Sorry to have wasted the people’s time.

 

“Okay, buddy, whatever. So, what, you want Chinese tonight? Or Indian?”

 

“I could cook,” Fraser offered.

 

“Whoa, Fraser, I’ve tasted your cooking. I’m not in the mood for Spaghetti-Os. You want home-cooked, I’ll cook.”

 

“If you insist,” Fraser said. He looked kind of glum when Ray glanced over.

 

 

But they’d arrived on Ray’s block, so he waited until he’d slid into his parking space and killed the engine before he said any more.

 

“Look, let me see what I got in the fridge. If I don’t have anything good in there, we can run down to the grocery on the corner and pick up whatever we need.”

 

“I could do that.”

 

“All right,” Ray said.

 

So they went up, and Ray found he had fresh pierogi in the fridge, whaddya know. He held up the container. “It’s magic, like in those fairy tales.”

 

“Oh!”

 

Ray grinned. “The magic of Mom,” he specified. “My mom was here. Bet you I have crispy shirts in my closet, too.”

 

“Oh. Do they go well with pierogi?”

 

Ray smacked him with a potholder.

 

It wasn’t much past four o’clock, but they were hungry from all the running around in the chilly park, so Ray made the pierogi, and he heated up a kielbasa and some sauerkraut to go with it, and they had an early dinner.

 

Afterward, Dief sacked out on the living-room rug, and Fraser proceeded to do the dishes and scrub the kitchen down to one step removed from surgical-operating-room clean. Ray kicked back on a barstool and watched in amazement. Finally, he had to call a halt to the madness. Even his mom would draw the line at detailing the oven with a toothbrush.

 

“Fraser.”

 

“In a moment, Ray. Just let me finish this edging strip…”

 

“No.”

 

Fraser looked up.

 

“Fraser. I don’t need my kitchen detailed. The GTO’s engine, fine. My kitchen, no. It should be a little messy. It don’t feel like mine otherwise.”

 

“But Ray, Social Services will come in and take note of—”

 

“It’s fine,” Ray said. “It is perfectly clean enough for them. You saw Lila’s kitchen. She hadn’t chased down every microbe and tortured it to death.”

 

“She has three children living there.”

 

“Well, a few germs are good for children. Gives them something to work up an immunity against.”

 

Fraser stopped his obsessive toothbrushing of the oven. “Oh. You know, actually, you’re quite right.”

 

“I know that.”

 

“I’m still going to throw your kitchen sponge away. Because while a small amount of bacteria can be beneficial, a colony the size of Gibraltar can be dangerous.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“It should be burned.”

 

“Yeah, well. Can’t do it. Regulations.”

 

“I see.” Fraser tossed the sponge in the trash, washed his hands and came around the bar to Ray. “I’m sorry if you think I was overstepping…I realize I’m a guest here, and…”

 

“Fraser, you’re not a guest.”

 

“I’m not?”

 

“You’re my boyfriend, remember? Mi casa es su casa.”

 

Fraser perked up. “Does that mean you’ve reconsidered…?”

 

“No, I meant that strictly in the usual way people mean it in the lower forty-eight, where it’s not actually an invitation to move in.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“But I have noted and appreciated your efforts to show me your domestic-type talents, and I will take them into consideration.”

 

“I was rather transparent, I suppose.”

 

“Like windows after Mom’s been over them with vinegar-water and newspaper.”

 

“I see.”

 

Ray sighed. “Fraser, you don’t gotta do this.”

 

“Well, if I just thought if I showed you my sincere desire to be of benefit to you as a, er, as a family member, that perhaps you’d look more favorably on…on my offer.” He cracked his neck.

 

“Sit down, Frase.” Ray pushed his barstool back a little to give Fraser room.

 

Fraser sat with his knees almost touching Ray’s. He didn’t seem to notice.

 

“Look. I already know all about your obsessive cleaning thing. I already know that would be a thing you’d do if you lived with me, and I’d have to chill. I already know you’d share the chores like a good Boy Scout or Mountie or whatever.

 

“Also, I have been giving your offer more consideration, like you asked.”

 

Fraser looked hopeful.

 

Ray shook his head. “But there’s my, uh, my problem, you know. And that’s going to be a real tough thing to get past. I, uh…look, I—I’m willing to try to get past it, if that’s what you really want.”

 

“Ray.”

 

“Or even…look. I think what I got to ask you is to tell me one way or...or the other. I got to know whether you think there really is hope for a relationship, a real one.”

 

“Ray.”

 

“Or that there’s no hope, that you know for absolute certain you could never love me the way I want. You got to tell me one way or the other. If there’s hope, I can wait. If there’s no hope, I’m not saying we can’t do this crazy thing, but I might need some time. Maybe even some time of not seeing you every day, so I can kind of get over my, you know, my thing for you. If I can do that. And I can’t predict how long that might take. Hell, just ask Stella. I can be a pretty tough nut.”

 

“Ray…”

 

“Just hear me out. If I have to do that, get over you…I’ll work on it, I will. And then when…things…ease up a little, you could move in and we could…try. To do it like you want.”

 

“Ray!”

 

“What!”

 

_“I’m_ willing to try.”

 

“I know that, Fraser, that’s why you offered in the first place.”

 

Fraser was shaking his head, and the smile on his face was as wide as it was the day they fell out of a plane into a bottomless snowfield.

 

“You mentioned Stella, Ray.”

 

“Yeah, so?”

 

“So I understand, now. What you’re looking for. What you want.”

 

“My God, Fraser, how have I not been clear about that in the past two-and-a-half years? I have fucking stood on my head telling you how I feel. I have drowned for you, Fraser. You have any idea how fucking terrified I am of large bodies of water, frozen or not? And how many times I have jumped into them for you, Fraser?”

 

But maybe that hadn’t been so clear after all. ’Cause that was the kind of thing Fraser did for any old person, not just the one he wanted to love and cherish for the rest of his life, so how would he understand Ray’s position on that?

 

“Do you understand how much I also hate _falling,_ Fraser? And I have done a fuckload of falling into, onto, and over things since the day I met you, and apparently I keep asking for more, because obviously I am unhinged enough to love you.”

 

“And I, you, Ray.”

 

“I know, I know.”

 

Fraser was shaking his head. “I don’t mean it lightly at all. When I said I’m willing to try, I meant I’m willing to try being your…er, your…your husband. If you’ll have me.”

 

The word didn’t compute. “My hus…”

 

“Husband. Your spouse…in every sense of the word.”

 

Ray felt all the blood drain out of his face. He even thought he saw a few stars. He put his elbow down on the bar and leaned his head in his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t…he couldn’t have heard that right. “What was that?”

 

“Husband,” Fraser said, getting the word out louder and without stuttering on it even a little bit.

 

Ray breathed again. “You mean that?”

 

Fraser nodded very seriously. “I do.”

 

“Except for the legal sense,” Ray said.

 

“Well, that’s not a possibility in either of our countries right now, but that won’t always be the case.”

 

“You think?”

 

“People will come around, eventually. Significant change can take a long time. In the meantime, we can make our union as legal as the law does allow. Domestic partnership. Couple adoption of Jackson when…when the law comes around to that, as well. Wills and health-care proxies and so forth. A commitment ceremony if you like…with the understanding that we’d get a legal marriage certificate as soon as they’re available to same-sex couples.”

 

Yeah, Ray was down for the count. Because where was his straight partner, the one who couldn’t even kiss him without calling it a lifesaving technique?

 

“You really mean it?”

 

“I mean it.”

 

“Uh, don’t get me wrong. If this is for real, this is greatness, but…why, Fraser? What changed your mind about me?”

 

“Nothing changed my mind about you, Ray. I have always held you in the highest regard. I’ve always loved you. I just…never saw our partnership in this light before. Perhaps because there wasn’t the possibility of a child, I never looked at it as _family._ But we are family, as you’ve pointed out already. We’ve already bonded into that cohesive unit that makes a real family even when they’re not blood relatives. I never had that, so I didn’t recognize when it happened.

 

“Now that I see it clearly, I can see that it’s exactly what I’ve wanted. Since I was six years old, and the only true family I had was taken from me, it’s the only thing I’ve wanted that I never found a way to get. And here you are, you and Jackson and Diefenbaker—we could be a family. If I’ll just stretch this far. If I can just let you in…as I’ve always _wanted _to do…even though I was too afraid.”

 

Ray’s mouth had gone dry. He swallowed hard. His voice came out a croak. “Frase, I have to know you’d want me…even if Jackson wasn’t in the picture. Heck, we still might not get him, you know.”

 

“I realize that. If we did not get to adopt him, I would be terribly disappointed, and I realize you would be heartbroken. I would only hope you could let me be there for you, support you through it, whatever happens. As your husband.”

 

“That any easier to say?”

 

“Yes. It’s simply that it’s not a term I ever thought would apply to me. It will take some getting used to, but I’ll manage.” Fraser smiled.

 

“You didn’t think you’d be proposing to a guy, huh?”

 

“Oh, I didn’t think I’d be proposing to anyone.”

 

Ray thought about that for a moment. It couldn’t be that Fraser didn’t get the full ramify-whatsis of what he was proposing, could it? The guy wasn’t that naïve. But Ray better put every last card on the table, anyway. Because this was big. They couldn’t afford _any_ misunderstandings.

 

“Fraser…you don’t even know if you could do, you know…” He breathed, steeled himself. “If you could do sex with a guy. You know I’d want that—you know that, don’t you?”

 

Fraser looked at him like he had a lugnut loose. “Well, of course I realize that.”

 

Yeah, Ray…duh. If Ray _telling _Fraser didn’t get that across, maybe the big hard-ons he was always sporting might’ve given that away.

 

“Right. Dumb question. You saying you think you could?”

 

“Well, I assume the procedure isn’t _that_ difficult, Ray.”

 

“Procedure.” Ray snorted. “You sound like you’re talking about cleaning a gun or fixing a snowmobile.” He moved closer to Fraser, close enough so their knees bumped, because, heck, if Fraser really meant it, there was no better time than now to test it out. Ray had already waited two-and-a-half _years_. He was entitled.

 

“I’m sorry,” Fraser said. “It’s the only way I know how to talk.”

 

“If we try it out, this ‘procedure,’” Ray said, “This going to freak you out?”

 

“I doubt it. You’re not talking about anything dangerous to life or limb, are you?”

 

Ray laughed outright. “Hell, if it was dangerous you’d have been all over it two years ago.”

 

Fraser cracked a smile at that, which was good; it meant he knew that about himself. It was already an issue in their partnership; it would be an issue in whatever form their partnership morphed into in the future. Especially if they had a kid depending on them. Fraser was maybe going to have to back-burner the daredevil shit, maybe even retire from it altogether. Because they couldn’t be taking unnecessary risks if Jackson was depending on them to come home…the way Dani hadn’t.

 

Ray wiped his eyes. Nice to be tearing up from laughter for a change. “It’s only dangerous to our duet,” he said. “If, you know, if it don’t work out. If you don’t like it. If you find that…you don’t like me. If I don’t do it for you.”

 

“Ray.” Fraser still sounded like Ray was talking nonsense. “You already know I like you. You’re my partner. I already spend more time with you than with anyone else. I have no objection to partnering you in any endeavor.

 

“If you can risk your life with me in the pursuit of justice, surely I can at least risk my heart with you in the pursuit of…happiness.” The last word came out a whisper, like a prayer or a curse…something you were afraid to say. Fraser rubbed his eyebrow suddenly, real hard—that was a big Fraser tell, and coming at a moment like this, Ray figured it was not telling anything good.

 

“It freaks you,” Ray said. “The gay sex idea freaks you.”

 

“Sex?” Fraser stopped rubbing his eyebrow abruptly and looked up. “Oh, no, Ray, that’s not it.”

 

“Well…what? Suddenly you’re—” Ray gestured at Fraser’s eyebrow, pantomiming the motion. “Doing your nervous things.”

 

“Not because of the idea of sex,” Fraser said. “I always assumed that, as I went through life, there would be, well, at least_ some_ sex from time to time. Well, I hoped.”

 

Ray made get-on-with-it motions.

 

“The concept that unsettled me is happiness. Did you hear? I just declared the intention to pursue happiness.”

 

Ray couldn’t help it, he grinned at him. “That’s so American of you, Fraser. You tell INS that, they will send you a green card by express mail.”

 

Fraser grinned, too. “Happiness,” he said again, like it was a foreign word he was trying out on his tongue. “That I could seek happiness, possibly attain it, is an assumption I haven’t made, not since…”

 

“Not since you were six,” Ray finished for him.

 

“Yeah. Do you see, Ray? It’s my connection with you that’s causing this…shift. Within two minutes of telling you I would like to try to be your husband, I’m already considering the radical possibility of…happiness.”

 

Ray wasn’t sure what he—or this whole wacky, wonderful, scary-as-hell idea of Fraser’s—had to do with Fraser suddenly realizing it was okay to want to be happy. Didn’t everybody already know that?

 

But, no, maybe not. Maybe they were finally cracking through to the nut of Fraser’s freakishness. Maybe this was the reason behind _everything. _He reached out and took Fraser’s hand in his, and Fraser let him, Fraser didn’t even seem to notice. Ray rubbed his thumb over the back of Fraser’s hand, soothingly.

 

“This is going to work out, Ray. It’s going to succeed.”

 

“How the hell can you tell that? We’ve never even kissed each other yet.” He scratched at his neck with his free hand. “Except that time that was buddy breathing, but that don’t count. I think.”

 

“No, it doesn’t.”

 

“I thought not. So how do you _know?_”

 

“Logic,” Fraser said.

 

“Mr. Logic. You figured it out like solving a crime?” That was so _Fraser _that Ray should have expected it. “You didn’t even lick the evidence yet.” He thought about it. “Huh. This is the first time I’m not so happy about that.”

 

Fraser turned his hand over in Ray’s and squeezed back, real gently. “We’ll get to that.”

 

Ray sure hoped so. “There’s such a thing as chemistry, Fraser, and I’m not talking about that thing in the lab with the bottles and eyedroppers and stuff.”

 

“Oh, we already have that, Ray. We have that in spades.”

 

“We do? But we haven’t ever…”

 

Fraser looked down at their joined hands pointedly. “How many times have you held my hand, Ray?”

 

Ray shrugged. “I don’t know. Lots. Dozens of times.”

 

“And hugged me. And slept next to me.”

 

“Okay, I get you.” It wasn’t mouth-to-mouth, but it was contact, some of it actual skin contact. Ray liked the way Fraser smelled, like woodsmoke and northern forests and leather and neat’s foot oil, and _Fraser_: so, yeah, chemistry. “Logic, huh?”

 

“Of course. That’s the mode of understanding that comes most naturally to me.”

 

“Not to me. At least, not your kind of logic.”

 

“Right. Mr. Instinct. So what do your instincts tell you now, Ray?”

 

Ray was still a little confused about how Fraser came to his conclusions, but he knew his gut never steered him wrong—if he would just shut up long enough to listen to it. So he did, and before he was silent for all of two seconds, he felt it, loud and clear. It was reverberating with the same message it always did, but Ray had worked so hard to ignore it that he hadn’t really noticed: “They say I should kiss you.”

 

“All right,” Fraser said.

 

“All right?” Ray’s knees went weak. It was a good thing he was already sitting down. “You mean you want to try the…uh, the procedure now?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“The whole shebang?” Ray felt a little freaked, but he figured if Fraser really was up for it, then Ray was in, jumping over the edge, feet first, no parachute. There was always the chance of crashing and burning, but Fraser had always caught him when he fell before. Ray figured he always would, and if he ever didn’t…well, the ride would have been worth it.

 

“What did you have in mind?” Fraser asked.

 

“It doesn’t have to be anything fancy,” Ray said. “Just…you want to try some kind of sex? To make sure you’re really on board with this?”

 

“I am,” Fraser said. “And—yes, I’d like to.”

 

Wow. Ray would have thought Fraser would freak out about the sex. A normal guy would’ve freaked out about the sex. Not Fraser. Fraser freaked out about _happiness._

 

Those hard-ons Ray’d thought Fraser was afraid of? He wasn’t afraid of them, just like he’d always said. He was afraid if he touched Ray, he might_ like _it too much, and that meant, God forbid, happiness might run up and attack him from behind like a polar bear or something.

 

Which went to show Fraser was _not _normal.

 

For a change, that was starting to look like a good thing. A normal guy wouldn’t have thought this whole thing up. A normal guy wouldn’t be offering Ray what Fraser was offering.

 

A normal guy wouldn’t be letting Ray tug him forward, touch his neck, his cheek, lean in to his lips…kiss him, kiss his lips real gently. They were just as soft and smooth as Ray’d always thought they might be. And Fraser didn’t pull away or stiffen up—none of that. Fraser stayed motionless under Ray’s mouth for about a minute, just letting Ray do it, maybe learning the feel of him…and then Fraser started kissing Ray back.

 

Fraser pressed forward and practically pushed Ray off the barstool with his kisses, except his hand twisted itself into Ray’s shirt, anchoring him in place.

 

And Ray let him, Ray just let him, because Fraser’s one Yes after two-and-a-half years worth of No had kind of hit Ray in the gut. His arms and legs shook, his pulse pounded in his throat—he probably had performance anxiety times ten. It was totally fucking ironic, but in spite of all his inappropriate erections over the entire time of their partnership, there was a chance Ray wasn’t going to be able to get it up at all right now.

 

Which would be the perfect, totally unhinged climax—except without the _climax—_to their whole unhinged, wonderful, wacked-out partnership, wouldn’t it? Just fucking great.

 

But, God, it wouldn’t be fair to Fraser. Fraser was expecting Ray to rise to the occasion here.

 

“Frase, I don’t know if I can, you know.” He gestured awkwardly. “Get hard right now. I just…this is really…”

 

Fraser pulled back far enough to focus on Ray’s face. His eyes were smiling. He didn’t look the least bit worried. He pressed his forehead against Ray’s so their noses touched. He pushed both hands up into Ray’s hair. He rubbed his face over Ray’s, pressed his cheek against Ray’s, moved his lips against Ray’s ear, and he said, right in Ray’s ear, in _that voice,_ “Oh, I’m not concerned, Ray. You’ve never had a problem with that.”

 

A shiver rolled down Ray’s spine faster than two men could tumble down a crevasse. His face heated. Heat gathered low in his belly. Lower. Throbbed. Swelled.

 

He was hard in seconds.

 

Fraser’s hand was on him a second after that, cupping his dick through his pants. Fraser was chuckling into Ray’s mouth.

 

So, yeah, there was a big advantage to having a boyfriend who noticed _everything, _remembered everything, cared about everything, whether it was the shininess of the chrome in Ray’s kitchen or the specific triggers that turned Ray on. Fraser just _did it_ for Ray, always had.

 

Ray pushed up out of his chair, straddling one of Fraser’s thighs, which felt so good. God, he wanted to rub himself against Fraser’s thigh so bad, but it’d chafe, so he held back and pressed his lips over Fraser’s instead, kissing the laughter out of him, kissing him until his laughter gave way to moans, little whimpers, begging for more.

 

It sure looked like Fraser could be down with the guy-on-guy thing, yeah. Slam-dunk, Your Honor. On appeal, the case was reopened, and this time the prosecution won: Fraser was nailed. Fraser was so nailed.

 

Fraser was so going to get nailed.

 

But not in the kitchen. Not the first time. Ray broke off the kiss, panting to get some air back, keep his head. He grabbed Fraser’s wrist and tugged him up off the barstool. “Bedroom. Now.”

 

Fraser came along quietly. Well, quietly, if you didn’t count how he was breathing kind of hard.

 

That was good. He’d been turning Ray on, day after day, for two-and-a-half years, making Ray fucking _crazy_ with wanting him. He deserved a little payback.

 

In the bedroom, Ray whipped the covers down and tumbled Fraser down onto the expanse of sheet, white like a field of fresh snow. Fraser’s face shone even brighter than it had that day in the Great White Freezer, when he looked around and said he was home.

 

_Wrong,_  Fraser. It turned out that home wasn’t necessarily where you were from.

 

Sometimes home was where you choseto be.

 

Ray was still trying to catch his breath. He struggled out of his shirt and dropped onto the bed next to Fraser.

 

Fraser’s eyes were wide as he reached for Ray, touching his shoulder, his chest, running gentle fingers over Ray’s tattoo, again and again.

 

“Ray, you’re…” Fraser sounded like he couldn’t catch his breath, either.

 

“What?”

 

“You’re so beautiful.”

 

“Who, me? I thought you had perfect eyesight.”

 

“I do.” Fraser turned shining blue eyes on him. “I don’t know how I was able to ignore—_this_.” He spread his hands over Ray’s pecs, pressing gently, like he was trying to feel the strength of the muscle. “Yes, I do. I know how: I didn’t let myself _look _ at you. I didn’t let myself entertain the idea…even when you so obviously did.” He smiled and pushed one hand down to the front of Ray’s pants, curling his fingers around the shape of Ray’s erection.

 

“It was too much for me,” Fraser said. “I didn’t think I could deserve this, have this: partner, friend…lover.”

 

“I love you, Fraser,” Ray said, his voice going all funny, kind of hoarse. Fraser’s hand was on him, that was all he could think at the moment. Fraser was _touching_ him and Fraser was going to _let _him…  “I been wanting you so much.”

 

“Can I—?” Fraser said, and he tapped Ray’s belt buckle.

 

“Oh. Sure.” Ray undid his belt and scrambled out of his pants so fast that he almost made himself dizzy. He pulled his socks off, too. He pulled off everything except his bracelet, which never got in the way.

 

Fraser’s eyes widened so much, the pupils really big and dark. “God, Ray. You’re…stunning.”

 

“You don’t gotta sweet-talk me, you’ve already got me,” Ray said, but he was grinning. Fraser was so offbeat in _everything._ What the hell did it matter whether Ray really was attractive or not as long as _Fraser _thought he was?

 

But Fraser was shaking his head, laughter in his eyes, and he said, breathlessly, “We’ll debate it later,” and pulled Ray toward him, urging Ray up on his knees, and…oh, yeah…that had the effect of bringing Ray’s hard cock in range of Fraser’s mouth. Good thought: Fraser was always thinking.

 

Fraser’s warm fingers wrapped around Ray’s hips; he leaned over Ray’s thighs. He licked his lips.

 

“Do it!” Ray hissed. “Never seen you hesitate to lick anything before.”

 

“Oh, I’m not hesitating,” Fraser breathed, and Ray felt the puff of warm breath on his cock like the gentlest, most maddening touch ever. Wetness leaked from him, dribbled down. Fraser watched it, seeming fascinated. “I’m savoring.”

“Savor later, Fraser,” Ray groaned. “Please, do it.” He put his hand over one of Fraser’s, on his hip. Pressed it there so he wouldn’t grab Fraser’s hair or something.

 

Fraser swallowed him whole.

 

One minute, Ray was begging for relief for his drooling cock, and the next minute, Fraser’s mouth was all around him, as far down as it could go, hot and wet and so fucking perfect that Ray’s eyes rolled back in his head and what he tried to say came out as strangled sounds, not words at all.

 

Fraser gagged a little and backed off, threw Ray an apologetic glance.

 

Ray gentled his cheek with his free hand.

 

Fraser turned his face into Ray’s palm and kissed it, then settled himself more carefully across Ray’s thighs, and took him back into that wet heat, slower and more careful this time. And then Ray felt his tongue.

 

Ray’d always kind of envied the evidence that Fraser chose to investigate by licking, although he’d never have admitted it; he now knew why that envy was totally and completely justified. In fact, the next time Fraser licked evidence on a case, Ray was going to have to excuse himself for a cold shower, because now that he knew what that amazing tongue felt like on his cock, he wasn’t ever going to be able to see Fraser lick _anything _without remembering this moment.

 

Fraser’s tongue was _strong. _He could move it in ways that put all other tongues to shame. He curled it around Ray’s cock, cradled Ray’s cock with it, soothed him with it. His tongue was soft when he turned it one way, soft and liquid, giving Ray a melty feeling that started in his cock and cupped his balls and shot through his belly, zinging from there to his whole body.

 

It was rough like delicate sandpaper when he turned it another way and rasped it gently over _that place_ on the underside of Ray’s cock, just below the head, the place where the nerves came together like one central electrical circuit, and Ray was going to have to make an exception to that “no licking electricity” rule. _This_ kind was A-OK with him.

 

Fraser pushed his warm, wet mouth down on Ray’s cock as far as it would go, which felt amazing, but covered really only a few inches, and then he unfastened one of his hands from Ray’s hip and wrapped it around more of Ray’s shaft.

 

And he began to suck.

 

Then Ray really did go incoherent, to the point where he couldn’t even _think_ any more. The whole universe faded out around him, till nothing existed except him and Fraser, Fraser’s mouth on him, accepting him, taking him in, loving him…driving him out of his mind with pleasure.

 

And Fraser never paused once, he kept sucking Ray steadily, and wow, maybe he didn’t dance, but he had amazing rhythm just the same. Ray’s balls hardened up high and tight under Fraser’s fist, nudging at it, and the pleasure gathered into a throbbing _knot _of goodness deep inside him, at the root of him, and Fraser never stopped, not until Ray felt himself lose it in Fraser’s mouth, flooding him, giving him everything.

 

Fraser swallowed and gasped and swallowed more, and finally pulled off gently, smiling and wiping his mouth delicately with a fingertip.

 

Ray’s fingers followed his, tracing the outline of those beautiful, pouty lips. He couldn’t speak for a minute, till he got his breath back, till he got his brain back on line. Finally he managed, “Jeez, Fraser. To think I bought that line of yours about not being down with the whole gay thing.”

 

Fraser’s laugh was a soft, light-as-air sound. “Well, how was I to know?”

 

Ray laughed so hard he held his sides. He thought he just might shake apart with joy.

 

Fraser finally stopped the hysteria by pushing Ray over on his back and leaning over him to kiss him. In between kisses, Ray gasped out, “Hey, how come you’re still dressed? That gorgeous body just for show?” and he poked and prodded him till Fraser gave in and wrestled his clothes off.

 

Ray let him take care of it, because he was down for the count; he had to marshal his energy for Fraser’s sake.

 

But when Fraser was naked, he didn’t even give Ray time to look and explore. He heaved his big solid form back up over Ray and started kissing him again, from his ears and neck, down over his chest to his belly. He swiped his tongue over Ray’s cock, too, real gently, which was good, because Ray was still sensitive and he squirmed under Fraser’s kisses.

 

Fraser kissed all the way down Ray’s legs to his feet, and yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, he would in fact lick anything, because he even tongued Ray’s instep on one foot and the heel of the other. Then he launched himself back up on top of Ray, heavy and solid and warm. Ray nipped his ear, nuzzled it.

 

Fraser put his lips down by Ray’s ear after a minute, and said into it, “I’ll give you some salve for your feet. You’re getting dry skin there.”

 

Ray squirmed under the shivery touches on his ear. “Oh, I guess I should take care of that, seeing as you’re going to be _licking_ them regularly.” He cracked up.

 

“Ray—” Fraser leaned up to look into his eyes. “I…I can’t tell you what this means to…to have the right…to have this promise of more…”

 

“Yeah, buddy, I get it,” Ray said. He took Fraser’s face in his hands and gave him the sweetest kiss in his repertoire, pushing his tongue into the heat of Fraser’s mouth, so soft and welcoming.

 

Fraser kind of whimpered, then; at least, he made this sound like he couldn’t help it, and he clutched Ray tight, and Ray felt him moving his hips, and yeah, that was Fraser’s cock, pushing against him, so hard. That was a nice thing to feel, finally, considering all Ray’s embarrassing hard-ons over the course of their partnership.

 

But Ray was tired of getting manhandled. Fraser did it enough on the liaising job; it was up to Ray to turn the tables in bed when necessary. He gathered his strength and shoved Fraser up and off him, and it was his turn to get on top, sitting up and straddling him. He took a moment to look at his conquest. Whoa, yeah. Fraser was as seriously hot as ever, which Ray knew that, he’d _seen _him. He’d just never had the right to touch, before. He put his hand right in the middle of Fraser’s chest, spreading his fingers over that expanse of creamy skin, loving the feeling of the solid muscle and bone underneath.

 

Fraser put up with that for about thirty seconds before he grabbed Ray’s hand and tugged it downward.

 

Oh, yeah. Somebody wanted some loving attention.

 

Ray could do that. Ray would be very happy to do that. He slid down to say hello to Fraser’s cock, finding it hard and flushed and beautiful, and he lost no time getting acquainted. It was firm in his hand and sweet in his mouth, and he tasted it, smoothing over the extra skin at the end and down the shaft, then back up, and held on when Fraser bucked under him, gasping. Ray paid attention: Fraser liked it gentler than Ray, apparently. So he was gentle, but persistent, jacking him with his hand and tonguing the head, and Fraser must’ve been pretty worked up already, because Ray didn’t get anywhere near the time he wanted with Fraser’s cock before Fraser was jackknifing up on the bed and coming, gasping, into Ray’s eager mouth.

 

He pulled off gently, licking his lips, and sat back on his heels. Warmth spread in the pit of his stomach and seeped through him like syrup.

 

For a moment he didn’t recognize the feeling.

 

And then he did: happy. He was happy.

 

He looked at Fraser and saw the exact reflection of the feeling in Fraser’s eyes. It was that shiny look, the one he’d kept noticing. And it was focused on him, riveted on him, and Fraser’s pupils were wide and dark with it, shining from deep inside.

 

“Oh,” Ray said. “I get it. You’re happy. You love me, and you’re happy.”

 

Fraser’s grin was as wide as the Yukon.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

They dozed off a little, and they woke, and they made love again, slower, sweeter, gentler.

 

Afterward, Ray dropped off again for just a little while, like ten minutes; he wasn’t really tired, after all. He was stirred up, juiced. He felt like he’d felt that day when they didn’t die on the mountain, but reached the summit instead.

 

“You think we can do it?” Ray asked him. “You think we can really do this?” He didn’t mean only the two of them being lovers, domestic partners, husbands. He meant all of it: Jackson, too. He meant forever.

 

And he knew Fraser was right there with him on the same page, on the same line, as ever.

 

“I think we can,” Fraser said, rock-certain belief in his voice. Like he somehow had a hotline to God and he just _knew._ Ray hoped so much that he was right.

 

“Because I want to so much,” Ray said. “I want you and I want our family, Dief and Jackson. I want it all. I think…God, Fraser, I think I am asking to have it all.” He shook a little in Fraser’s arms.

 

“I know, Ray,” Fraser said. “It’s rather terrifying, isn’t it?”

 

“Yeah, but…only before you fall.” Ray grinned at him. “Once you give in and make the leap, you’re flying.”

 

 

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

 

Epilogue

 

 

After they saw the judge, Ray and Fraser took Jackson and Dief to the park. It wasn’t green any more, like it had been in November, during their first trip to a park. It wasn’t even a better park. What it did have going for it was that it was the closest park to their _home._

 

It had only been a few months since Jackson came into their lives. And they were legally only foster parents, which meant that there was still the hurdle of permanent adoption to get over.

 

But Fraser believed they’d do it, and late at night on those nights when the tougher parts of the cop job got to Ray and he lay awake for a while, Fraser would come half-awake and pull him close, maybe kiss his neck or snuggle up tight against his back, and Ray would remember that Fraser’d believed in_ this, _too, when all the evidence seemed to point to its never happening.

 

Fraser’d believed they could be a family, however offbeat, and he’d believed in Ray, believed in him _so much_ that he was willing to put everything on the line, body and heart and soul, just to be with him.

 

Ray shut his eyes for a second and grooved to the music of Jackson’s laughter, Dief’s happy barking, Fraser’s silly giggle. God, Fraser had a dorky grin and a silly giggle, and Ray was pretty sure that almost nobody ever got to see them, except Ray and Dief and now Jackson. But more people were getting to see that gorgeous, genuine _smile_ of Fraser’s: Fraser smiled more often, because he was _happy. _And that was greatness.

 

Ray heard them coming closer. He opened his eyes. Jackson and Dief were practically on top of him before he could react, plant his feet, think up a strategy for staying upright. It wasn’t going to happen. Ray grinned and let the juggernaut hit him, just let the world tip, slide, tumble on down.

 

But, no, that wasn’t the world, it was just him, down in the snow, laughing and trying to defend his ears from Dief’s soppy tongue, and getting snow stuffed down the back of his jacket by Fraser and his kid, Jackson. His kid and Fraser’s kid. Their son. Both of the guys he loved, wrapping their arms around him and hugging the stuffing out of him.

 

They’d been there to catch Ray all along.

 

Not a bad way to fall, Ray thought as he stretched his arms up and hugged them back. Not bad at all.

 

 

—end—

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> **Acknowledgments**Thanks to AuKestrel for her brilliant insta-betas and constant support, and to Isiscolo and Sisterofdream for much handholding and cheerleading. I really never intended to write a novel when I started this thing, but for me, for this request, that's what it took.   
> Nos, you made me write you-know-what, about 2 years earlier than I thought I would be ready to do it. I hope you're happy. (Me, I had a blast. *g*)


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